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16 If Faulkner Is Wrong and We Don’t Endure or Prevail Drums for the body desiccated dark down— way down deep in Mississippi where the silver wisp of the mustache remains maybe, drums for the hopeful dreaming and the meaning of life—what a stupid phrase what a stupid phrase— drums for the killer and the willing, drums for the long gone and the still-to-come, drums for the clothes tattered in the weather—a sweatshirt maybe that was red and white. Drums for the body no one has found and drums for the hair still long along the skull that remains open from a tire iron or a hammer down, come-down drums for the shin bone of Beowulf pocked and slender under the mountain slow drums for the jaw bone of García Lorca lost in Spain drums for the box of bones the coroner sifts through—the cardboard box, the yellowed broken gnawed-on bones of someone lost to our humanity come undone or come at last to its full expression killing the one loved best or some unlucky one whose death like most was un-guessed so sudden and so fiercely come, drums for the dead and gone and all of us who have come and gone and will continue on. So the heart drums, the words they come. So the heart drums, the words they come though nothing comes—nothing comes—to save you. Drums for what was beautiful and did no good, or did just some. Drums for the stupid murderous ones we always were. Drums for William Faulkner. ...

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