I wanted to make me a flag from the first row of wagons,
to make me a flag from the line of a keel.
I cut Jefferson stars and started to hang them
in the dark of a night I thought we'd never fill.
So good night and farewell, ye sweet Tennessee ladies,
good night and farewell, ye sweet ladies of Maine.
We must do what we want while we can
so when morning comes down
we can do what we must once again.
But I made me a flag from the streaked cheeks of children,
I made me a flag from the welts off a slave,
I made stars from the eyes of the dead and the nights
of the men that killed them made thread black as the grave.
So good night and farewell...
Pour me a drink of the distance and silence
you find at first light on American roads.
Sit with me a while, 'cause this love and this violence
I cannot understand them and they're all I know.
My grandfather he made a flag out of Westward,
my father he made him a flag out of Stone,
and I don't have a flag, but I would leave my daughters
stars and stripes broad and bright enough to make a home.
So goodnight and farewell, ye sweet Tennessee ladies,
good night and farewell, ye sweet ladies of Maine.
We must do what we want while we can
so when morning comes down
we can do what we must once again.
Hey Kirk,
ReplyDeleteI'm sitting in the Marriot outside of Madison, Wisconsin. Everything grey white, the ground...the horizon, speckled with veins of grey-black trees "Why do we live here?" fifty year old Pat asks her husband (who insists on being called Deacon David) as we leave the McGovern House of Pie. "You've asked me that question for thirty years Pat. I don't know. I really don't know." Deacon David turns to me and says, "What the hell were our ancestors thinking?"
I sat with these verses today. Really good, Kirk. I think this is one of the poems I've been waiting for you to write...waiting our whole friendship for you to write for me. Musical, lyrical, with loss and blood and touchstones from the American unconscious. I got the same feeling that I get when I look through my dead father's things--grief and gratitude, memory and calling. I wondered, "Why is Kirk interested in America...?" Then I thought, it's origins. Kirk has always been interested in identity. Born a stranger to his family, his town, his country. Maybe still a stranger in his current family. He is trying to make a home. He's trying to claim something, let go of something, start something, give himself permission to feel and be who he is. He's trying to find a resting place. A landscape to be buried in. I feel this too. I'd love to find this poem in a dusty clothe covered book, like Emerson's books when they were first published, sewn binding, rough cut pages, a book as big as your hand. I'd like to hear this sung next one of these frozen lakes outside of Madison with heavy-set waitresses, red-nosed ice-fishermen, pig farmers, buxom women with Polish names who aren't squeamish about handling a man's genitles--I'd love to hear you sing it while eating German sausage or baked wall-eye, listening and feeling home/and not home while sipping from a can of Old Milwaukee.
--Mark