My friend Kyle wrote this, and I think its gorgeous.
My school is a battlefield.
I mean that more literally than merely
A place where ideas are thrown and caught.
Frustrated asphyxiation. No,
My school sits on Marye’s Heights.
Of course, the beauty of the spring foliage
Is an easy lie. We eat in a building named for
A tribe of people who, years and years
Before, lived. And died. Mostly died,
For in America we believe that names are most
Important; that immortality through names
Is more important than the actual killing,
The moving off into closed places
Where traditions, where gods
Are quickly and quietly slaughtered.
We like to forget much of the past.
So now I understand why the South likes to build over
Their battlefields. Why the two mounds next to my dorm
Went overlooked until I learned they were the platforms
For cannon. So they fired through the place where
Two hundred years later, I would lie down to sleep.
And in that stretch of land from the school to the river,
Where houses sit ignorant to their history,
I suppose that
Thousands of men screamed in agony
And bled and were ripped to pieces,
Crying out for God
For families, for someone to hold their hand as they died.
My school is a battlefield.
Its foundation is steeped in blood and forgotten memory.
I mean that more literally than merely
A place where ideas are thrown and caught.
Frustrated asphyxiation. No,
My school sits on Marye’s Heights.
Of course, the beauty of the spring foliage
Is an easy lie. We eat in a building named for
A tribe of people who, years and years
Before, lived. And died. Mostly died,
For in America we believe that names are most
Important; that immortality through names
Is more important than the actual killing,
The moving off into closed places
Where traditions, where gods
Are quickly and quietly slaughtered.
We like to forget much of the past.
So now I understand why the South likes to build over
Their battlefields. Why the two mounds next to my dorm
Went overlooked until I learned they were the platforms
For cannon. So they fired through the place where
Two hundred years later, I would lie down to sleep.
And in that stretch of land from the school to the river,
Where houses sit ignorant to their history,
I suppose that
Thousands of men screamed in agony
And bled and were ripped to pieces,
Crying out for God
For families, for someone to hold their hand as they died.
My school is a battlefield.
Its foundation is steeped in blood and forgotten memory.