After hearing the Governor of Virginia announcing Confederate History Month (no mention of slavery) and reading John Meacham's op-ed in
The New York Times this morning, I decided my sonnet sequence taking on this topic would be Poem of the Day. This also follows a long facebook "thread" begun by Marilyn Kallet about narrative in Southern Poetry. Regardless of poetic fashion, there are still stories that have to be told.
Southern Fictions ...human kind
Cannot bear very much reality.
T.S. Eliot, Burnt Norton
1.
My father drapes his battle-flag across
a back room window. If I tried to tell
him why I wish he wouldn’t, I’d have hell
to pay. Or else I’d end up sounding crass
and smug. It’s just not worth it. Let it pass.
I squelch my fury at this flag and all
it means, the stubbornness, the pride, the gall
of my own people trying hard to pass
the buck, as if what happened never did
exactly, or even if it did, it doesn’t mean
what “they” think: something awful-- racist swill
and all that liberal junk. I know the truth hid
out those days in silence, but, what does it mean,
this flag? Refusal to admit our guilt?
2.
I don’t know. I still can’t get it right,
the way those dirt roads cut across the flats
and led to shacks where hounds and muddy shoats
skulked roundabouts. Describing it sounds trite
as hell, the good old South I love to hate.
The truth? What’s that? How should I know?
I stayed inside too much. I learned to boast
of stupid things. I kept my ears shut tight,
as we kept doors locked, windows locked,
the curtains drawn. Now I know why.
The dark could hide things from us. Dark could see
while we could not. Sometimes those dirt roads shocked
me, where they ended up: I watched a dog die
in the ditch. The man who shot him winked at me.
3.
While good ole boys lit out with baseball bats,
I dawdled in the bathroom staring at my face
a long time in the mirror. Saw no trace
of beauty there, so counted zits. Sighed. That
was that. Another self-examination, the last
of that day, as it turned out. My father’s place
was empty at the table. My mother paced
the kitchen, and we worried until half past
when we heard his pickup churning over ruts.
He slammed the door too hard. He walked too slow.
We watched him mouthing words we couldn’t hear.
When he came in, he said Nobody had the guts
to say go home. He shook his head and told how
those boys with their bats had bullied blacks clear
to the county line, yelling don’t come back
again. My father drove home, in his head
the words he might have said. They aren’t bad
boys, he told us. Just misguided. The right tack
to have taken would be father-like and ask
them if they knew what they had done. Instead
he’d not said anything. He picked at bread
set out for sandwiches. The black
girl come to clean house stood outside
calling, Here I am. We pitched our voices low
and changed the subject. Cleared the table, let
her in. My father sat there for the longest time
still brooding. That was forty years ago.
I wait. This story isn’t finished yet.
4
When the feminist poet flew down from New York,
I drove her back to campus, an hour’s
easy drive. We chatted all the way there,
mostly politics. I liked her so much I shored
up my courage and told her of the work
those boys had done, the childish way they
bragged, how no one had the nerve to say
shut up. She misinterpreted my words,
assuming I had suffered in the midst
of bigotry, silently doing my very best
to row against the tide. It sounded so good
I kept quiet, ashamed to say I’d been no activist.
That I’d done nothing, joined no protests,
felt no guilt. Had seen no reason why I should.
5.
However poor we are, we aren’t black,
said a neighbor. That was bedrock, solid ground,
the core of our identity. The one unyielding fact
of life. As long as we had them around,
we had someone to look down on and that
was hard to come by those days when the sound
of insults on the newscasts made what
we’d become to outside eyes come clear: clods
from the bottom of the backwoods.
Does my voice shake when I read my verse
outside the South, for fear I seem a dunce
or worse? Yes, I’m ashamed to to say. I’ve stood
beside some famous poets and wished my words
could sound as if I came from somewhere else.
FIRST PUBLISHED IN
CALLALOO (CONFEDERATE FLAG ISSUE)
