This connection extends through word choice, as his face "fades" (1) and "hides inside" (2) the granite. The skeleton of his face that allows him to be recognizable and different from the memorial disappears, and he and the memorial in effect becomes one fitting body. This merging together is not only on a seeming level, as his face spirits "inside" the granite, digging beyond the surface into the interior of the rock. .
Furthermore, the memorial is more than it seems to Yusef; it is not just a stone, but something he recognizes on a more deep and reflective level. It is the deeper meaning that motivates his passionate response in the next lines: "I said I wouldn't/dammit: No tears.I'm stone. I'm flesh" (3-5). These lines show both his past emotional tussle as well as his present one. For Komunyakaa, this memorial does not stir in him new feelings but old ones; ones which he struggles to hold with little success, although he visits the place with the awareness that he finds it a highly emotional experience. He struggles to contain his feelings, telling himself he is "stone" (5), as the memorial's granite, a strong and stable reminder of the past. He fails in his struggles, as he recognizes the dissimilarity between him and the memorial: he is a living being. He shares the blackness with memorial's granite, yet he can feel the effect of the connection whereas the granite cannot feel the agony it directly depicts.
A primary tool that Yusef Komunyakaa uses to interconnect his emotions are imagery. Komunyakaa cannot march away intact from the memorial, and as a substitute, he finds himself wrapped up by flashes from the past: "Brushstrokes flash, a red bird's/wings cutting across my stare.The sky. A plane in the sky" (22-24). Once more, these names summon memories from the war, remembrances of war aircrafts hovering in the sky. However, like his name in smoke, these recollections take on a strange value with uncontrolled images: "A white vet's image floats/closer to me, then his pale eyes/look through mine.
