Death Bells (Elegy)

I hear the death bells tolling
and the funeral knells rolling
amidst the cheers

Joshua told me fire purifies
and I believed him
and so I set the kindling
I struck the match
I stood among those who
saw a dream hatch
Into fabled realization
Blinking in the sun

I ushered in the day
Where there had been darkness
Heeding those crying in the night
Though I had not been amongst them

But now I look back
for I hear death bells tolling
and funeral knells rolling
amidst the cheers

Those who were few
Are few no longer
And those who were proud
Are proud no longer

The bells toll for my father
The bells knell for my childhood

And coal mines
And french harps
And cotton fields
And cane poles
And bible camps
And county lines
And dirt roads
And old men in overalls
with calloused hands
and leather skin

An an imagined/failed faerie land
A dream of might-have-beens
made never-could-bes

I struck the match
I would do it again

But I hear death bells tolling
and funeral knells rolling
And I am sad
Amidst the cheers

Author notes

I voted for Obama and I would again. I think we might honestly be on the edge of a new era in America and a lot of our old iniquities are getting washed out. A lot of other things are getting washed out with them though, and I will miss those things. I wish people had not made it where we have to sacrifice the one to be rid of the other.

"Dixie's had a face lift; I guess she's looking better,
but I kind of like the old one. I never will forget her.

Look away, gone away, far away, Dixieland."

That's from the John Anderson son "Look Away." That song has such a powerful effect on me that it nearly reduces me to tears, and I usually won't even cry when a person dies. That should impart something about how much the place I grew up means to me.

"Joshua" here refering to the black generation between the Baby Boomers and Generation X, between MLK's generation, them being Moses of course, and the current generation.