NAMES.(The Talk of the Town)

Eighteen months ago, several hundred people gathered outside Senator Charles Schumer's apartment building on Prospect Park West, in Brooklyn. They were there to protest, with a candlelight vigil, the approaching invasion of Iraq, which Schumer had voted to authorize. Jessica Epstein, a spirited young protester, was, like most of the people there, stooped awkwardly over her candle, trying to keep it lit. She said, with some agitation, "My roommate said, 'Why are you bothering Schumer at his home?' But this goes so far beyond bothering someone at his home. This is a war that's going to kill thousands of people."

When the Pentagon announced last week that the number of American troops killed in Iraq had passed a thousand--and it is generally believed that the number of Iraqi civilians killed may be more than ten times that--a coalition of peace groups staged a new round of vigils, this time to commemorate the dead. Judging from the protest held at Columbus Circle, amid the remnants of Hurricane Frances, no one has yet figured out how to maintain a dignified posture while carrying a lighted candle in the wind and rain. Still, a certain majesty was achieved by the simplicity of the ceremony: a sombre reading, without commentary, of the names of the fallen, and their ages.

"Mark D. Taylor, forty-one."

"David K. Fribley, twenty-six."

"Michael W. Mitchell, twenty-five."

"Jesse J. Martinez, twenty."

The readers were a relay of men and women, old and young. Some were from military families. After the pronouncement of each name, the crowd would repeat it, with an effect that was softly sacramental. At intervals, a scholarly-looking man who was clearly familiar with Arabic pronunciation read from a vast but fragmentary list of the Iraqi civilian dead.