Afterthought

(on U.S. Senate's apology for past failure to
enact anti-lynching legislation, June 13, 2005)

Our pious Senate its past sin repents
Of filibustering each lynching decree,
Its stonewalling that sanctioned sacrilege
Spawning the Strange Fruit on the poplar tree.

Now are the patriarchs by scripture charged:
Produce good fruit according with repentance
Lest you would bring God's wrath upon your heads,
Your heels kick at Heaven by Heaven's sentence.

Yet strangely silent is that august body
Though countered clearly with a kindred crime
Replacing red-besplattered black-skinned fruit
With olive hue that rots upon the vine

Hanging from gulag cell in Abu Ghraib,
Guantánamo and gaols around the globe,
The same atrocity by different colors
Carried out by lynch-mobs clad in khaki robe.

How proudly all the little valiants vaunt
Their goodness, in self-righteous juices douse,
But woe upon that tribe of hypocrites,
The vipers nesting in the Upper House.

June 13, 2005