Antebellum Elegy

Prologue Abandoned and in disrepair the mansion Is dark now; a story behind every stanchion. It is an unwitting monument to a way of life, Since foreclosed through bloody civil strife. Antebellum The hush of summer evenings cued the trilling (Fiddled on hind legs accompanied by warty pouches) Chorus; pierced only by the discordant creaking Of unseen stairs rising to the house slave's quarters Portending the disquiet of antebellum martyrs. Wittiness trees attest in angles and chains To the master's grid and shade the lanes For the surrey whose wheels rutted the gateway (Become artifacts) en route to soirées of gaiety. The prairie land, violated by steel and condescension To the roots of its towering grasses and purple gentian, Forced to nourish seeds of an alien flora for hempen Riches, patiently awaits its day of redemption. Bricks of fertile earth fired over an Osage hearth, By chattel hands, in mortise and tenons, gave birth To a mansion at the prelude of a moral sea-change That would divide the nation and break its chains. Current Era Their lives deprived of enslaved labor, the once-lived Voices ebbed a little as each generation removed. Shrouded in leaves of time they are a mute bequeath Indelibly recorded upon the stories that lie beneath. Dreamer boy speak for them now. Sing for bluestem that switched Against the sky nourishing the thundering herds that provisioned Native tribes. Rage for those hobbled to sow but never to reap, Weep for a Nation gone mad and seeds planted too deep. Reflections after touring an abandoned antebellum mansion. Copyright Paul M Thomson September 2011.