Meditation at Decatur Square

1 In which I try to decipher the story it tells, this syntax of monuments flanking the old courthouse: here, a rough outline like the torso of a woman great with child— a steatite boulder from which the Indians girdled the core to make of it a bowl, and left in the stone a wound; here, the bronze figure of Thomas Jefferson, quill in hand, inscribing a language of freedom, a creation story— his hand poised at the word happiness. There is not yet an ending, no period—the single mark, intended or misprinted, that changes the meaning of everything. Here too, for the Confederacy, an obelisk, oblivious in its name—a word that also meant the symbol to denote, in ancient manuscripts, the spurious,corrupt,or doubtful; at its base, forged in concrete, a narrative of valor,virtue,states' rights. Here, it is only the history of a word, obelisk, that points us toward what's not there; all of it palimpsest, each mute object repeating a single refrain: Remember this.