4993. THIS FRAMING IS A LEGEND AND I CAN'T GO ON

THIS FRAMING IS A 

LEGEND AND I CAN'T GO ON

I once owned 40 acres and a mule; traipsed west on the promise

of free soil and John Wilmot. Left Towanda with a premise:

'Free Soil, Free Speech, Free Labor and Free Men', so

the banner said. I was richest among these wise, rich men.

Alas, ended up we fought for free the slave constabulary.

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Wagon trains and broken mules, Shattered wheels and lots

of explaining  -  bible-touting red men trying to forswear

all we'd already lived. Out and lived out and out and worn out.

People naming towns, it seems, can never come up with

anything true. Dukesbury could never be Shit-Town Dry Acres.

Floating Elm could never be named Hanging Tree.

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It's so many year on later now, let me tell this America a

trick or two : nothing is what is, everything you know is a lie, 

no man is free, Jesus was a dream, borders end in the mind,

mothers and children bear no resemblance, the furtherance of

rights is a furtherance of slavery. You want I should go on?

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I am the new judge, sent from Tivoli through the pass at Allmount,

around the watery bend on Turn-Par Crossing, and along the

bottom lands to Rispoli. Now I am here. I have to listen : listen 

to those pleadings of the man with little water, the one with too

much land, the one with five dead children and no helpers to 

till and fray, the mother gone crazy with memory and screaming

 through the night, in her broken cabin with empty shells for

windows and a dead-man in the bed who was her husband once.

-

There's a hanging in the gloaming by the station here tonight.

Everyone is coming, far and wide. We must proclaim the

Death of Evil, right here, in front of me, before the dark of

this night sets in  -  dusk it will be, the less then to see.