3646. BECKWITH

BECKWITH

(the killing of medgar evers)
Something like that was the name  -

Byron De la Beckwith it may even

have been. I just cannot remember  -

1957, or maybe '63, I want to say.

Negroes being kept out of school,

lunch-counter sit-downs in lame,

crummy Woolworths, and news 

commentators all pretending 

they understood.

-

Then guns come out, or a

wild, mangy dog  -  shot dead

on the dirt road in some 'Niggertown'

bungalow settlement like in 'To Kill

a Mockingbird'. I don't know; I'm a

kid again, and things are all mixed up.

-

How crazy-well do we remember things

anyway? The art and the artifice of chimera

and change. I was not what I am not now.

Well, anyway, I think that's how it goes.

-

How are we sanctified? Loud garbage

trucks, and dumpsters hitting the pavement

and walls; those eerie, early-morning

sounds of service and servitude? The

little, fat man, sitting down to coffee, but

first taking his pills with water? How then,

how, are we sanctified? Tell me.

-

After the battle, when the still-warm guns -

cooling - are being put away, the

dead still litter the streets.