A New Birth
J. Quinn Brisben
The interstate in Alabama ran
Through cuts vibrating with a red so bright
It hurt my eyes and falsely greened the slab,
A fine white wake of death. I conjured up
Some murdered friends, one shot three weeks before
For riding in a car less mixed than this:
With blacks and Jews and Japanese and me
With grits on tongue and kin in half these towns,
Come back with hope to force alive a dream.
Through dark and twisting hours in Tennessee
My worried mind had held four shapely lines.
Because we were not persons, merely threats,
I could not stop to write, so, damn! They blurred
And faded with the impact of the dawn.
They were well lost. One crooked gold-toothed smile
On court house steps from one seamed, earth-black man
Who had unlearned his fear paid for them all.
Old Williams hated five-beat lines like these,
But interstates make fresh the cadenced words
Inside the heads of drivers, and he would
Have understood my risked recalling when
He delved and pulled new life from bloody muck,
Quick pen and forceps used with equal grace,
Then pummeled butts and words until he forced
A yelp of song from everything he touched.
He did not always split his time with ease.
Sometimes he let a breech or strangling cord
Obscure a cunning phrase and cursed himself
For holding six-pound lumps of angry flesh
Worth more than verse that would outlast them all.
Sometimes a human need makes craftsmen dare
To drown the book but liberate the song.
