America

A name only once crammed into the child's fitful memory in malnourished villages, vast deliriums like the galloping foothills of the Colorado: of Mohawks and the Chippewa, horsey penny-movies brought cheap at the tail of the war to Africa. Where indeed is the Mississippi panorama and the girl that played the piano and kept her hand on her heart as Flanagan drank a quart of moonshine before the eyes of the town's gentlemen? What happened to your locomotive in Winter, Walt, and my ride across the prairies in the trail of the stage-coach, the gold-rush and the Swanee River? Where did they bury Geronimo, heroic chieftain, lonely horseman of this apocalypse who led his tribesmen across deserts of cholla and emerald hills in pursuit of despoilers, half-starved immigrants from a despoiled Europe? What happened to Archibald's soul's harvest on this raw earth of raw hates? To those that have none a festival is preparing at graves' ends where the mockingbird's hymn closes evening of prayers and supplication as new winds blow from graves flowered in multi-colored cemeteries even where they say the races are intact.