History
By: Robert Lowell
History has to live with what was here,
clutching and close to fumbling all we had--
it is so dull and gruesome how we die,
unlike writing, life never finishes.
Abel was finished; death is not remote,
a flash-in-the-pan electrifies the skeptic,
his cows crowding like skulls against high-voltage wire,
his baby crying all night like a new machine.
As in our Bibles, white-faced, predatory,
the beautiful, mist-drunken hunter's moon ascends--
a child could give it a face: two holes, two holes,
my eyes, my mouth, between them a skull's no-nose--
O there's a terrifying innocence in my face
drenched with the silver salvage of the mornfrost.
Poetic Outlaws has a new shop! Nothing big. Just a few T-shirts and some coffee mugs. People seem to like the logo and I’ve had many requests for some shirts/mugs showcasing it. Anyway, here it is. Thanks for all the support.
CERTIFICATE NO. 8041.10
Robert Lowell's great poem for the union dead
didn't figure on the reverse of bubblegum cards
we collected and exchanged in the playground
between our school and the graveyard. The history
of the American Civil War, depicted gleefully
with an excess of bayoneting and gore
The women of Atlanta screaming. Their terror
suggesting, this is what freeing the Negro means
The playground still exists
It was where I passed (easily) my cycling proficiency
For riding between cones
and knowing the Highway Code
I was presented with a certificate
Number 8041.10
Meanwhile
in Los Angeles, a black cyclist has just been shot
between fifteen and twenty times by police after
being stopped. If they ever manufacture
the bubblegum cards again, maybe they could start with him
Powerful to my gut and elusive to my mind