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Antebellum Elegy
Prologue
Abandoned and in disrepair the mansion
Is dark now; a story behind every stanchion.
An unwitting monument to a way of life,
Since foreclosed through bloody civil strife.
Antebellum
The hush of summer evenings cued the trilling
(Fiddled on hind legs accompanied by warty pouches)
Chorus; pierced only by the discordant creaking
Of unseen stairs rising to the house slave's quarters
Portending the disquiet of antebellum martyrs.
Wittiness trees attest in angles and chains
To the master's grid and shade the lanes
For the surrey whose wheels rutted the gateway
(Become artifacts) en route to soirées of gaiety.
The prairie land, violated by steel and condescension
To the roots of its towering grasses and purple gentian,
Forced to nourish seeds of an alien flora for hempen
Riches, patiently awaits its day of redemption.
Bricks of fertile earth fired over an Osage hearth,
By chattel hands, in mortise and tenons, gave birth
To a mansion at the prelude of a moral sea-change
That would divide the nation and break its chains.
Current Era
Their lives deprived of enslaved labor, the once-lived
Voices ebbed a little as each generation removed.
Shrouded in leaves of time they are a mute bequeath
Indelibly recorded upon the stories that lie beneath.
Dreamer boy speak for them now. Sing for bluestem that switched
Against the sky nourishing the thundering herds that provisioned
Native tribes. Rage for those hobbled to sow but never to reap,
Weep for a Nation gone mad and seeds planted too deep.
Reflections after touring an abandoned antebellum mansion.
Copyright Paul M Thomson September 2011.
Copyright ©
Paul Thomson
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