notes of a native son

    

                           As I lay dying, America

              --O tender is the night--

              I can hear the sound & the fury

              from my sanctuary

              in another country,

              I can see my lives and how

              I lost them this side of

              paradise (no victim, I),

              I can see my homecoming,

              my family reunion, America,

              just above my head,

              I can see the beckonings

              of the face of an angel,

              I can glean from the

              ways of the hour other

              voices, other rooms, a further

              range in the clearing, where

              a witness tree stands,

              an empty mirror, an open head.

              And I can see the other side

              beyond the gates of wrath, America,

              where men and angels

              at the end of the world

              make final payments in the

              company of women,

              their eyes watching God.

              I can see across the river

              and into the trees, America,

              how the winner takes nothing

              --ah sin--how the shadow man

              with a one-way ticket leaves

              dust tracks on a road

              (not without laughter),

              notes of a son and a brother

              at the edge of the body,

              and how misery--a bag of bones

              on the road in different seasons --

              is now the long walk day by day

              of the boy I left behind me,

              past the people of the abyss

              --the armies of the night--

              now the running man

              running against the machine,

              running in the family

              on existential errands,

              spreading the gospel

              according to the son,

              of a new life on the

              golden pond,

              of the progress of love

              in the skin of a lion,

              of a tenant in the house

              of dawn.

              Oh America I can see

              coming through slaughter,

              riot, rage, dred, half-lives,

              my wicked wicked ways,

              wounds in the rain, aloneness,

              a tangled web, the winter

              of our discontent,

              something to declare,

              something I've been meaning to tell you:

              Oh America, beloved America,

              who do you think you are?

              Letting go, crossing the water

              --the awful rowing toward God,

                     to a God unknown-- 

              making it new, America,

              a twice-told tale,

              like the old man and the sea

              surfacing in the time 

              of the butterflies, home

              sweet home burning bright

              -- raise high the roofbeams! --

             Joshua then and now

              in dubious battle, 

              a dog's mission --

              to honor the difficult,

              the greater inclination,

              the awakening,

              the touchstone,

              the long dream the world over,

              here and beyond,

              of the children past

              the age of innocence, and

              certain people possessing

              the secret of joy--

              of representative men,

              the outsider, 

              invisible man, 

              a tramp abroad,

              my life and hard times,

              black love, black love

              --white man, listen!--

              no executioner's song,

              the fruit of the tree,

              one of ours.

Botsford, Alan. A Book of Shadows. Katydid Books, 2003.