Friday, May 18, 2018

On The Removal Of Certain Statues

the ghosts of former statues drift
through public squares
unmoored we are,they wail
as if they could
twice dead and solid as moonlight.now;
once we gleamed near shade trees
sentinels of grief
to those who raised us
now are we razed
we who never dreamed but were
immemorial,so were we deemed once?
engraved, and left there, weathered, weathered
eating the air of time for lost sons remembered
and home shattered, shuttered, never to be repaired
lost mirrors now
of the,- the ships that reached port
too early. of the untimely frost
of the absurd cause ruined nd ruinous
dragged from our perch
and assailed , war criminals
rocks on trial
though we have shed no blood nor drawn it
where will the ghosts of war go now
we are banished from city and town
the widowed brides long past
of those whose line died out for nothing
we cannot ask, being but that
shadow of stone.
sentinels now of a grief expressed nowhere
because we were on the wrong side of
the question we never understood
for those whose farms burned down
or would have had they not stood in the breach
and we would weep if we could
slow tears of stone
but we have grown wings in a manner of speaking
scrawled over and stained as though we could be shamed
and from our exile dreamed did we? that
gone are the trumpets from our marble hands
the horses from under us so are we punished
who never drew breath
all snowy sunsets down!
but wished we could day after speechless day
unmoving in the college quadrangles
we might have stood in, being the semblance of men
for those who rode death down and drowned
for no resounding glory.the phantom son of their old age...
ghosts of ghosts are we
in perpetuity
now they have come symbolically to say
we must wrong the wronging brother his last image
that canceled equation of the brother against brother
the space at the supper table new defiled
a puzzlement before God.
and ever, the unwreathed tomb.
the marble mistaken child.defaced,
erased now.
mary angela douglas 17 may 2018