Photo: Clay Banks via Unsplash
O holy martyr
when you crossed the river
to be beaten by
the state troopers of the Promised Land
O redeemer of Dixieland
when you felt the clubs touch
skin and blood
and blood touch dirt,
how could you not question America?
O solemn soldier
we should not praise you
solely to shirk
our duty
O stalwart protector
but when courage seems
lost somewhere between
Selma and this haze,
how can we not look to your beatified lisp?
O congressman
speaker in the storied halls
you are soon
to leave
and soon we will have
to grieve
but before you slip back
peacefully
into the heavenly mists
I have a question
wait
just a moment
to board the inevitable boat
of deserved peace
O father
living voice of the
rededication
O prophet of
past promises to be fulfilled,
did you think you would survive Alabama
to see Washington this year,
to be felled by silently duplicating cells?
and this is no sycophant’s
sonnet to
power
no bard’s broken bow
to patrons
long gone
this is the scribe
trying to remember the way
the Alabama must have looked
below that bridge
forty years before
his birth
Jewish
quarter-Indian
grandfatherless
Southern Wisconsin
a million odes
four thousand more apostrophes
old man river of memory
old man river of spilt blood
not to be forgotten,
before we take up
the yoke of remembrance
before we lose oracles to time
the way carpets become shaggy and grey
renew our faith
O marching freedom rider
renew our faith
before we forget the desert
and begin to wallow in
the sweet baths of the Promised Land,
before we can no longer see
the poverty and the thousand Mississippis
and we want to fall
to the hardwood and
beg for this renewal
this final precept from the philosopher
we all want to scream for
losing memory
to see you somehow
lift us from ignorance
alone
our heads must stare at Abel’s
cracked skull
must gouge our eyes of incest
before we can be
free
