The Negro’s Civil War

The Negro’s Civil War
(for Sean Bell)

by Eugene Schlanger, the author of September 11 Wall Street Sonnets (Paris 2006)

The focus, of course, is on Colonel Shaw
Buried in the ditch before Battery Wagner
With his slaughtered Negro soldiers.
The Massachusetts Fifty-fourth had suffered
More losses than the Confederacy
That fateful fiery morning.
Loss always seems to come
With a sunrise to remember.
The Comedian wills everything.

The mad Brahmin poet Robert Lowell
(Perhaps the best and the brightest
Of the last half-century)
Re-reported the loss.
Many were urged onto Boston Common,
Opposite the old Statehouse,
Towards Saint Gaudens’ bas-relief
Of Shaw and his gaunt soldiers.

Art is a wondrous concession
To those prescient illustrious Fools
Buried at Copps Hill and along
The estuaries that once fed these
Nieuw cities of fire and brimstone
And lumbering merchants.

Later, a film, Glory, also returned
To that first Negro regiment
Recruited in the North:
Soldiers (and their lily officers)
Paid unequal wages, expended
(Some suggest) in South Carolina
To shore up support for the war.

Historians press primary documents
For evidence of their understanding.
I hear the slaughter of Negros in the North:
Christians hunting other Christians.
A fusillade still pouring upon the sons
Of Douglas and Washington.

© Copyright Eugene Schlanger, 2008 - All Rights Reserved - Tous droits réservés