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