After James Agee's "Let us now praise famous men . . ."
“Let us now praise famous men.” I know.
The book’s already been wrote. Here is
a poem, almost a sonnet no less —
to tell you what’s really going on. See,
the families featured were not famous
at all. It was an inside joke. Poor as dirt
white tenant farming families replaced
the freed slaves, their lives ignored in the
land of the free. They, the unpaid, unsung
ignored backbone of a broken, rotted,
corrupted system, their labor stolen, exploited.
Generations endured. No rhyme, no reason,
no thickening plot. No punchline in this
sick joke that’s told. No volta, no chorus
for this sadder than sad American song.
Very moving, thoughtful, sad—Raymond, I love the way your poems flow from your thoughts—as good an example of interior monologue as you could want