To Die at Appomattox

On the removal of the Confederate Memorial at Arlington National Cemetery

The compromise has been forsaken.

She was lifted from the pedestal
As an airbus smeared the soft blue sky.

Few were there that day to witness —
The bulk of them were dead —
But the seeming banality of it, the pity in it,
Was once a boulder to digest in McLean’s parlor.

There is nothing left for me to do
But to go and see General Grant …

The yellow vests and the loud orange
And the ceaseless crawling crane
Were bad dreams for the fallen, asleep.

She was laid down on the ground.

Chancellorsville and Fredericksburg
And Bull Run are far behind us now.

Captain Sims rides up to Custer with the
White rag. Again and again and again.

What are we to say? We, trying to remember?
We with pride gnawing through our chests?

Will the pruning hook be a spear again?
Can the plowshare remain as such?

Because humiliation is worse than death,

and I would rather die a thousand deaths.

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