Bryan, Texas Procession

Having nothing else to do The dead march in procession In Bryan up Texas Avenue Past the courthouse and police station. One comes from his execution In law-guzzling Gatesville, having lost His last appeal. "To think," he says, "a low-down DA's career move cost me my life—and now he's up there ruling on the federal bench. There's just no justice in this life. All my life I heard about it but it never once showed me its face— hey!—you righteous citizens who can quote the Bible from Ezekiel to Revelations, listen: God has never heard of you and wouldn't Care to." This bitter new-minted shade Had punched a hole through nature, and others Followed. Like air from an untied balloon, they hissed into the sunlight, into time, talking and talking lest their heart knowledge go to waste. But no one paid them any mind. Only lunatics Talk to the dead, and as you see, I've set This down in stanzas of drunken verse To absolve my senses of all and any Responsibility. Still, to tell the truth, I was lost, desperate for any sort Of wisdom just then; I couldn't say no To all those talky spirits holding court.

2.

I stood transfixed by one who'd seen a lynching As a boy. He said he'd spent his death Searching death's kingdom for the one He'd seen die. "It's really the truth," He kept repeating "My father took me there. And I suffered from nightmares for years. But I never Wanted to watch that murder. And now I can't find the lynched man. I've been everywhere The dead go—but he is nowhere to be Found—unless I've ended up in hell And he's above the sun somewhere. Jesus— I only want to say I'm sorry. If you see him, tell him that." And he staggered off, a bit of burnt rope gripped in one hand, and I wondered if he really were the son, or the father wishing he were, being alone with his lynching for all eternity and unable to take it. Can the dead go mad? Was I, an utter lunatic for listening, a piggy bank for self-delusion? But then one I could only see as sane Came up; he was powerful but politic, A wizard of sorts, though dressed Like a banker—a man of the party line, Unwilling to shout or throw his weight Around, but so assured as to be magnetic. "Dead or alive," he said, "people are intemperate, insatiable, drunk on their own transience. "I, though, thought in terms of generations, not of years. If I hoarded power it was not for my use alone. I knew I was the one who could best gather The coins of might in the still war-broken land—gather them and pile them up Like a Pisgah for my people to stand on. For since the powerless are always crushed, The crushed must have some power. Remember: In me the industrialist and the ex- Slave holder grow out of the backbone Of the slave. The bullet-riddled land began to fix Itself, to knit torn parts together In the channels of my brain. In my weighed words the future where you live unfurled." "Farinata!" I said, but he left me without a word.