© 2012 Steve King
All rights
reserved
I sing only of a man—
the rage must find some other muse.
Of arms and readiments for war,
the patient reader must excuse.
I seek one spirit of that time,
to wonder how it so inclined.
True, Harper’s
Ferry had the guns,
bristling in a
phony peace.
There was
fratricide enough,
and death was
hard upon the land:
the time was
torn, the spirit fouled:
while Kansas bled,
Missouri howled.
A house divided must soon fall.
How sooner must
a man decay,
no passion there
to unify,
to pull and
pummel and upbraid
when destiny
would sound a call.
All high-born aims
must come to naught
when deeds undo
promises made.
And so he felt
his place and time,
and raced a path
his heavens laid.
How empty is the
soul that goes
to any easy
pathway shown,
but hesitates at
the Abyss
and trembles at
the great Unknown.
Like Abraham,
like Joshua,
the million
stars would light his way.
A black tide
rising to reclaim
its covenant
would seize the day.
The problem left
for later minds
was how to gauge
competing crimes:
did subjugation
and the lash
bring on itself
the fatal clash?
Did slavery
itself reward
with bloody
recourse to the sword?
Could any reason
yet accord
the place of
minion, right of lord?
He led his sons
through Treason’s gate,
held them all as
ready tools,
as acolytes who would
delight
their father’s
will and share his fate.
In the old Books,
fathers are stern
but few would so
expect this faith,
and,
contemplating on their ends,
seek sacrifice
and not amends.
No plan is safe
that must depend
upon the
vagaries of men,
and so the army
he would raise
was lost before
his rifles blazed.
This blow to
challenge infamy
was short of
force and long of pain;
the dreamy
triumph was undone
and only
martyrdom remained.
Then it was over,
he was gone,
or so they
thought who strung the knot:
the great
uprising would abate
as only force might
demonstrate.
As if his
gravestone would provide
a dam against
the coming tide;
as if the blot
the nation held
might, without bloodshed,
be expelled.
* * * * *
* *
And now the bones lie peaceably
as far from rage as they might be,
forgotten in the farmstead turf,
his blood a fountain to the earth.
(Executed in 1859, John
Brown remains one of the most important interlocutors in the United States’
continuing moral dialogue. Those
who are interested in particulars should refer to W.E.B. Dubois’ biography, John Brown, and Thoreau’s A Plea For Captain John Brown. The John Brown Farm near Lake Placid,
New York, is the final resting place of Brown and several others—including a
number of his sons—either killed at the raid on the arsenal at Harper’s Ferry,
or hanged soon thereafter by the State of Virginia.)
