TO THE MANY MEN WHO HAVE CHANGED THEIR NAMES

237. TO THE MANY MEN WHO HAVE CHANGED THEIR NAMES:

We’ve been reading topical literature for so long that no one any longer has a grasp of what even the topic is : because of that there are squeamish figures who constantly hide and unformed characters vaporous and unreal – they come out from behind big trees when no one is looking they hide in piles of lumber and leaves : McGowan’s Pass and the hills above Harlem town – places like that where once the armies fought and the minions of revolt crawled fiercely up the tiring hillsides while escaping enemy fire or dying on the bluff and either way it all became part of the story : Jumel Mansion and Hamilton Grange the displaced places no one knows what to make of today and hundreds of men selling candies and pretzels and sodas around any park entrance or courtyard for kids they shamelessly congregate one dollar treats onto unsuspecting mothers and fathers : here where the British fell the militias clashed the very blood of two riffraff armies drained slowly to the ground and whose dying last breath was that I may have just heard Joe Houghton or Emmett L. Long or Howard Macawber or Marland Oakeshott these are merely names and more names and letters on gravestones now chiseled by time with the digits falling off and no sense to be made and these NAMES are but things men change on their ways to somewhere some other land some other place again : the marvelous effect of 3 centuries of tired grime built up and caked by retelling and rhyme : here where I stand about some withering street I juggle time and all its reasons in two soft leaky hands – I know nothing and I know not and the only thing different is things are the same as they ever were : there there the distant trains gouge their tracks along the beastly river below – we watch the gale-force winds which they create in their passing as limbs fall and houses shudder and the old river-captain’s barge-like home still is sheltered by the breezy shore : the ticket takers are all dead and their names too are legion and the gatekeepers wife I see still sits by the door – she waves a wet rag and she wears a blue apron – looking out to some distant point she seeks the sound of Frank or Alan or Robert coming home once more : and those rebel boys too are all dead : call it something – Manassass Chickamauga Spotsylvania Woods or Gettysburg or Deckhert’s Crossing - we can mix up the names and mix up the wars because they all are the same : deadening matter in old sodden books leaflets of disaster notices of hangings writs of execution or the firing squad for all - such is the way of our lives with houses climbing hillsides now and sunlight blocked by the coarse annals of information overload and notebook text and fiery messages of Indian guides blowing signaled smoke frothy and rotund over some highway landscape and the only noise we hear – besides the roar of traffic and truck – are the clappings and accolades and all the applause of the dead far behind us for the dead far ahead.