… “make way, make way, give way,
the Massachusetts 54th Honor Guard is coming through, make way,”
yelled a grizzled veteran, a grizzled veteran of his generation’s own unloved war who had turned a strange
corner for peace as he waited to form up to march on Armistice Day 2012 with
the brethren against maddened war news, and talk of war. His mind swirled back
not to unloved war fights and streets fights against war but to what meant his
automatic call of a moment before at the sight of that honor guard.
Thoughts of long gone snickers
and barbs in Richmond town (and not just Richmond town but cotton greedy commercial
whigs of Boston, those who spoke only to Cabots and to god) when Andrews declared
for a regiment (and Lincoln, hell, old cracker Lincoln to hear it told, called
for chain break), snicker thoughts that three-fifth of a man, hah, are you
kidding, would not, could not (lacking manly presence, and stinking to high
heaven of humid, moist bellum cotton suns) fight to break chains to recover
that missing two-fifth, thoughts of rebel
snicker that no white johnnie from some desolate Ohio River town or farm for
love nor money would move one foot, move one inch, to break those chains,
thoughts too of manly courage (nervous, hell, yes, nervous as every man is
before bullet fights, jesus, what do you think ) before Wagner front, and tear-eyed
thoughts of Captain Brown and his band of brothers before hellish Harpers Ferry
fight, no rebel snickers that night.
And thoughts too of still lonely Shiloh
graveyards (or you name your hundred graveyards) solid blue bled in a grey
land, a foreign grey land, simple gravestones,
maybe a hasty wooden cross when the dead piled up too high, names now getting
harder to read for ancient eyes, and forgetful minds, thoughts of childhood
postage stamps commemorations of such and such Grand Army of the Republic
encampment, and then none, as time took its toll, thoughts of sturdy yeoman
southern mountain men, kindred, who fought for the union, fought for Mister
Lincoln, if not for his nigras, thoughts too of
stirring sights at Memorial Hall of scented wood-etched names , some
class years decimated, of Harvard union fallen in the hundred battlefield graveyards,
but thoughts too, immense thoughts, back to that childhood time desecrated statehouse
Saint Gaudens relief and proud men, proud union men marching to hell, or glory.
Yah, some things are worth
fighting for, and as his finished his thoughts and readied himself to march one
more time against the monsters of war he wished, wished to high heaven, that his
war, his unloved war, could have produced anything but cold black marble down in
D.C. …
For the Union Dead
Relinquunt Ommia Servare Rem Publicam.
The old South Boston Aquarium stands
in a Sahara of snow now. Its broken windows are boarded.
The bronze weathervane cod has lost half its scales.
The airy tanks are dry.
Once my nose crawled like a snail on the glass;
my hand tingled to burst the bubbles
drifting from the noses of the crowded, compliant fish.
My hand draws back. I often sign still
for the dark downward and vegetating kingdom
of the fish and reptile. One morning last March,
I pressed against the new barbed and galvanized
fence on the Boston Common. Behind their cage,
yellow dinosaur steamshovels were grunting
as they cropped up tons of mush and grass
to gouge their underworld garage.
Parking spaces luxuriate like civic
sandpiles in the heart of Boston.
a girdle of orange, Puritan-pumpkin colored girders
braces the tingling Statehouse,
shaking over the excavations, as it faces Colonel Shaw
and his bell-cheeked Negro infantry
on St. Gaudens' shaking Civil War relief,
propped by a plank splint against the garage's earthquake.
Two months after marching through Boston,
half of the regiment was dead;
at the dedication,
William James could almost hear the bronze Negroes breathe.
Their monument sticks like a fishbone
in the city's throat.
Its Colonel is a lean
as a compass-needle.
He has an angry wrenlike vigilance,
a greyhound's gentle tautness;
he seems to wince at pleasure,
and suffocate for privacy.
He is out of bounds now. He rejoices in man's lovely,
peculiar power to choose life and die-
when he leads his black soldiers to death,
he cannot bend his back.
On a thousand small town New England greens
the old white churches hold their air
of sparse, sincere rebellion; frayed flags
quilt the graveyards of the Grand Army of the Republic
The stone statutes of the abstract Union Soldier
grow slimmer and younger each year-
wasp-waisted, they doze over muskets
and muse through their sideburns…
Shaw's father wanted no monument
except the ditch,
where his son's body was thrown
and lost with his 'niggers.'
The ditch is nearer.
There are no statutes for the last war here;
on Boylston Street, a commercial photograph
shows Hiroshima boiling
over a Mosler Safe, the 'Rock of Ages'
that survived the blast. Space is nearer.
when I crouch to my television set,
the drained faces of Negro school-children rise like balloons.
Colonel Shaw
is riding on his bubble,
he waits
for the blessed break.
The Aquarium is gone. Everywhere,
giant finned cars nose forward like fish;
a savage servility
slides by on grease.
The old South Boston Aquarium stands
in a Sahara of snow now. Its broken windows are boarded.
The bronze weathervane cod has lost half its scales.
The airy tanks are dry.
Once my nose crawled like a snail on the glass;
my hand tingled to burst the bubbles
drifting from the noses of the crowded, compliant fish.
My hand draws back. I often sign still
for the dark downward and vegetating kingdom
of the fish and reptile. One morning last March,
I pressed against the new barbed and galvanized
fence on the Boston Common. Behind their cage,
yellow dinosaur steamshovels were grunting
as they cropped up tons of mush and grass
to gouge their underworld garage.
Parking spaces luxuriate like civic
sandpiles in the heart of Boston.
a girdle of orange, Puritan-pumpkin colored girders
braces the tingling Statehouse,
shaking over the excavations, as it faces Colonel Shaw
and his bell-cheeked Negro infantry
on St. Gaudens' shaking Civil War relief,
propped by a plank splint against the garage's earthquake.
Two months after marching through Boston,
half of the regiment was dead;
at the dedication,
William James could almost hear the bronze Negroes breathe.
Their monument sticks like a fishbone
in the city's throat.
Its Colonel is a lean
as a compass-needle.
He has an angry wrenlike vigilance,
a greyhound's gentle tautness;
he seems to wince at pleasure,
and suffocate for privacy.
He is out of bounds now. He rejoices in man's lovely,
peculiar power to choose life and die-
when he leads his black soldiers to death,
he cannot bend his back.
On a thousand small town New England greens
the old white churches hold their air
of sparse, sincere rebellion; frayed flags
quilt the graveyards of the Grand Army of the Republic
The stone statutes of the abstract Union Soldier
grow slimmer and younger each year-
wasp-waisted, they doze over muskets
and muse through their sideburns…
Shaw's father wanted no monument
except the ditch,
where his son's body was thrown
and lost with his 'niggers.'
The ditch is nearer.
There are no statutes for the last war here;
on Boylston Street, a commercial photograph
shows Hiroshima boiling
over a Mosler Safe, the 'Rock of Ages'
that survived the blast. Space is nearer.
when I crouch to my television set,
the drained faces of Negro school-children rise like balloons.
Colonel Shaw
is riding on his bubble,
he waits
for the blessed break.
The Aquarium is gone. Everywhere,
giant finned cars nose forward like fish;
a savage servility
slides by on grease.
Robert Lowell
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