Detroit to D.C. night train   Capitol, parts East   Lone young man takes a seat   And by the rhythm of the rails   Reading all his mother's mail   From a city boy in a jungle town   Postmarked Saigon      He'll go live his mother's dream   Join the slowest parade he'll ever see   Her weight of sorrows carried long and carried far   Take these Tommy to the wall      Metro line to the Mall site with a tour of Japanese   He's wandering and lost until a vet in worn fatigues   Takes him down to where they belong      Near a soldier, an ex-Marine   With a tattooed dagger and eagle trembling   He bites his lip beside a widow breaking down   She takes her Purple Heart   Makes a fist, strikes the wall      All come to live a dream   To join the slowest parade they'll ever see   Their weight of sorrows carried long and carried far   Taken to the wall      It's 40 paces to the year that he was slain   His hand's slipping down the wall for it's slick with rain   How would life have ever been the same   If this wall had carved in it one less name?      But for Christ's sake, he's been dead over 20 years   He leaves the letters asking   Who caused my mother's tears   Was it Washington or the Viet Cong?   Slow deliberate steps are involved      He takes them away from the black granite wall   Toward the other monuments so white and clean   Potomac, what you've seen   Abraham had his war too, but an honest war   Or so it's taught in school