American Roots: Moral Associations

1 Kinship:

Is embarrassing the wind,

Like dead black boys,

Falling down from the trees,

Then downstream–

On their knees,

Blood like,

Like a rich nation.

2 Metaphor:

Becomes humiliating,

And clean,

Ticking like a ripe machine.

Do not

Bend,

Fold,

Or mutilate me–

This is your future speaking.

3 The air smells so metaphysical

We have accused it–

Of smog,

And lost manhood,

Then all ritual.

4 Whoever wrote:

A view is a mountain speaking

But left the introduction

For the snow,

And accused silence

Of its soul.

5 The whole nation:

Is a stanza of blackness,

A huge white whale,

Faith in space

(Like the newspapers),

And the quiet insistence

We have peace,

And it’s your world, brother.

Source: Communion: Poems 1976-1998 (Copper Canyon Press, 1999)