shall we gather at the river
Murdered, I went, risen,
Where the murderers are,
That black ditch
Of river.
And if I come back to my only country
With a white rose on my shoulder,
What is that to you?
It is the grave
in blossom.
It is the trillium of darkness,
It is hell, it is the beginning of winter,
It is a ghost town of Etruscans
Who have no names
Any more.
It is the old loneliness.
It is.
And it is
The last time.
- James Wright
1.
There they are now,
The wings,
And I heard them beginning to starve
Between two cold white shadows,
But I dreamed they would rise
Together,
My black Ohioan swan.
2.
Now one after another I let the black scales fall
From the beautiful black spine
Of this lonesome dragon that is born on the earth at last,
My black fire,
Ovoid of my darkness,
Machine-gunned and shattered hillsides of yellow trees
In the Autumn of my blood where the apples
Purse their wild lips and smirk knowingly
That my love is dead.
3.
Here, carry his splintered bones
Slowly, slowly
Back into the
Tar and chemical strangled tomb,
The strange water, the
Ohio river, that is no tomb to
Rise from the dead
From.
- James Wright, from Shall We Gather at the River