Kevin Young

[Michael]

We are trying to get Kevin Young, an enormously talented, young
African American poet to round out the Mass. Poetry Festival. And that
sent me back to some of his work. So as I leave on a 2 week vacation,
I thought to send you his poem For the Confederate Dead. There are
some great fragments within it---In my fridge only
the milk makes sense —silent until the enemy bayonets what is
believed, etc.
Here it is:

For the Confederate Dead
Kevin Young

I go with the team also. — Whitman

These are the last days
my television says. Tornadoes, more
rain, overcast, a chance

of sun but I do not
trust weathermen,
never have. In my fridge only

the milk makes sense —
expires. No one, much less
my parents, can tell me why

my middle name is Lowell,
and from my table
across from the Confederate

Monument to the dead (that pale
finger bone) a plaque
declares war — not Civil,

or Between
the States, but for Southern
Independence. In this café, below sea —

and eye-level a mural runs
the wall, flaking, a plantation
scene most do not see —

it's too much
around the knees, heighth
of a child. In its fields Negroes bend

to pick the endless white.
In livery a few drive carriages
like slaves, whipping the horses, faces

blank and peeling. The old hotel
lobby this once was no longer
welcomes guests — maroon ledger,

bellboys gone but
for this. Like an inheritance
the owner found it

stripping hundred years
(at least) of paint
and plaster. More leaves each day.

In my movie there are no
horses, no heroes,
only draftees fleeing

into the pines, some few
who survive, gravely
wounded, lying

burrowed beneath the dead —
silent until the enemy
bayonets what is believed

to be the last
of the breathing. It is getting later.
We prepare

for wars no longer
there. The weather
inevitable, unusual —

more this time of year
than anyone ever seed. The earth
shudders, the air —

if I did not know
better, I would think
we were living all along

a fault. How late
it has gotten . . .
Forget the weatherman

whose maps move, blink,
but stay crossed
with lines none has seen. Race

instead against the almost
rain, digging beside the monument
(that giant anchor)

till we strike
water, sweat
fighting the sleepwalking air.