#1695 - sundown town

 

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20.ix.24

sundown down

ekphrastic for Justin McCarthy’s 1965 ‘Mauch Chunk’

(now Jim Thorpe, PA)

 

the colour goes

or as long as it lasts

 

high orchard

ore under  

 

town and a river

night coming

 

safe

till the trees go in

 

roofs still bright

 

you’ll half imagine

 

the train along

the river runs

 

you can see where they were once

now down

the grass comes over

 

they bury a coloured man just for his name

a statue too of the athlete Indian

 

sheds and green beside

see power transmitted

 

Coalville?

Mauch Chunk?

Mawsch Unk in Uanmi?

is it ‘Bear Mountain’? Place of the Bears?

Is it ‘Sleeping Bear’?

 

and the Molly Maguires are buried there

a lynching for the agitation

 

scenic place

bridge and bright leaning

that’s the town built

 

some hilltop last to graze

 

it’s as in the 1914 postcard

eagle drone over

 

no coal though now

 

the valley rings birdsong

lights  flicker on

 

see the dinner beginning

 

that’s coal

lights up all the bones broken

three dollars a week

lights the table of poor fare

 

it’s all King Coal and the sixteen tons

dust in the folds of the bones of the heart

 

the lynching’s all a long time since

the crosses

 

you can hike from here

it’s a pretty town  

 

catch a train there like in the olden days

that whistle’s all you can hear