EMANCIPATION DAYS
Emancipation never stopped me crying -
blood deep over those sodden fields. Men
broken and battered. Crying loudly, about
to die. Emancipation never put a leg back
on a man from whom the cannonball tore
it or refilled a chest perforated by shot.
Every morning that dawned was a torrid
morning of death. No playwright's scansion
could affect these endings : widows and
girlfriends in shriek on muddied ground.
The cobbled mess that was that man - the
one in pieces over there - is now a feed
for carrion chasing us down, eager to
peck as quickly as we die. Emancipation
never stopped the seed from sprouting
in the socket that once was an eye. There,
those white bones, that skull, on the field
so free across that pond. Emancipation
never hid behind a tree, nor did it
ever do anything for me.
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