Reading Thomas McGrath as the Confederate statues come down.

Richard Spencer throwing a party.

 

This is a nightmare nimble in the Big House,

Where sleepers are wakeful, cuddling their terror,

In the empty acres of their rich beds, dreaming

Of bones in museums, where the black boys yawn.

 

[from Thomas McGrath's "Deep South"]

In the era of tiki-torch fascism, when our consumer appetites for ethnocentrism are easily provisioned by Wal-Mart, I read Thomas McGrath to get a sense of what is falling. And what should have fallen long ago.

A few snippets from McGrath's incredible poem, "Ordonnance", which I discovered in my notebooks lacking any reference or context. 

During a war the poets turn to war
In praise of the merit of the death of the ball-turret gunner.
It is well-arranged: each in his best manner
One bleeds, one blots-- as they say, it has happened before....

.............

They are fighting, fighting-- Oh yes. But somewhere else.
In the dark.
The poet reads by firelight as the nations burn.

The poet's community must be built to encompass all human beings. All poetry-consuming mammals.

We have no property to defend that is not ultimately shared. No borders to maintain against one another. No statues to hold sacred. 

Comes now one who has been conquered
By all he sees. And asks what—would have what—
Poor fool, frail, this man, mistake, my hero?

 

More than the hands on the lines and the back aching,
The daily wrestle with the angel in the south forty,
More than this forever lonely round
Round hunger and impotence, the prickly pair:
Banker or broker can have dreamed no fate
More bankrupt than this godlike heresy
Which asks of love more leave than extended credit,
Needs comradeship more than a psalm or surely these
Worn acres even if over them
Those trained to it see signs of they say God.

[from Thomas McGrath's "Woodcut"]

Source: Atlas Obscura

Hope unto hope, dream beyond monstrous dream

I sought the world.

Now, at the black pitch and midnight of despair,

I find it was always here.

[from Thomas McGrath's "The Progress of the Soul"]

 

And then my favorite, a poem that has kept me company through the years, through the Iraqs, through the failures of foreign policy and humanity. McGrath's "War Resister's Song":

 

Come live with me and be my love
And we will all the pleasures prove--
Or such as presidents may spare
Within the decorum of Total War.