A poem on the Rev. Martin Luther King
I wrote this a few years ago, but I thought it appropriate to post today on the 50th anniversary of Dr. King’s assassination in Memphis. He…
I wrote this a few years ago, but I thought it appropriate to post today on the 50th anniversary of Dr. King’s assassination in Memphis. He was in the city to help striking sanitation workers.
MEMPHIS 1968
Too late
for Echol Cole and Robert Walker,
crushed by the compacting plate
when wet wires shorted,
pronounced dead the same day
Elvis became a father, a story
that led the local news. Smashed
like ants as they hid
from heavy Memphis rain,
tucked under cans already scraped
near-clean for dinner. Chicken
bones. Potato peels. Apple cores. On Monday,
the trashmen walked.
Tied in a single garment
of destiny, King said, take out
the trash, clear the sewers, the toilets.
Field hand, pipe fitter,
pharmacist, physician:
All labor has worth.
Black-and-white photo. American street.
An army tank. A black man.
The placard hangs
from his neck like a cross.
I Am A Man it says, as if
answering a question.
It is a crime, King said,
for people to live in this rich nation
and receive starvation wages.
To work and need food stamps,
to miss work and not get paid.
Caught in the rain like strays
sniffing for meals, no shelter
but the trash truck’s grimy barrel,
sitting in garbage with the maggots
and rats, the lowest
of god’s creatures.
We are God’s children,
King said, and we shot him.