In Time

Monday, July 7, 2014
SALEM, Ore. — Oregon officials on Monday dedicated a memorial for the unclaimed remains of 3,500 people dubbed the “forgotten souls,” most of them former patients at the state mental hospital who became a symbol of the nation’s history of mistreating, neglecting and warehousing the mentally ill.

Their ashes
left in copper canisters
stacked on shelves
wait for a proper burial
Time and water altered
some surnames,
Corroded letters hide
who slept in this place
for a few months
or decades
Their stories now
interred in copper canisters