VISION I watched from the earth, low in dry grass, trying not to breathe, blink, or stir. Gray mist spilt from the lips of men dressed like Pilgrims, like Custer, like Mounties. I don’t know when I was. Or where. Everywhere, everywhen, was the point. Dark morning or late day, I watched continents reunite, watched mountains kiss and blur. All that had been severed was married back to itself. Deep seams of reunification scarred the whole of the earth, the error of division mended— or else it was time itself I saw, rolling forward and back. I saw white men unloading figures from ships, trucks, crates. Efficient and perfunctory, like art handlers, only the bodies were living: bound at the wrists, iron complicating their necks. I strained to watch and comprehend the system, its logics, these agents operating in obedience to mechanics and nothing more. How do I say that what I was shown I saw from farther away than a body will ever go? Past history and argument. Past victors and vanquishment. Up and off. Or down and in to the trillion atoms swirling in every cell. Inarguable. Under a tent in June, a whole clan of giddy families gathered one buggy night. Bonfire light. I was watching from tall grass and then— So soon? But how?—from a tree’s high bough, strung up, swaying to the mob’s intention, that old familiar song all know or come to learn. Before I could ache or yell, I swept past the stars I recognize, past the edges of this or any night, past the clamor of humankind until I was no longer alone, and it was not for my own body that I cried. Not for vengeance or mercy. Not for any single sin, nor any blood spilt that was not all blood. For the moan wrung from all throats and all men all seasons on earth. By which I mean: Divine was the grief. The whole unceasing universe gathered to watch and ache as the earth whirred and spun in its place, as the families packed up, the armies dispersed, the rivers swole and overflowed their banks. (Tracy K. Smith)
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