Watched a wonderful tribute to the life and work of Marvin Bell today.
This particular poem seems relevant with the current elections
The Book of the Dead Man (The Vote)- Martin Bell
1. About the Dead Man and the Vote
The dead man was in the crowd when the militia moved in.
You can’t know what the dead man who was there knows.
He was told to pipe down, to tread lightly, to wave when the leaders
passed on their way to the great hall.
He saw the past re-emerge from the future, he saw midnight at noon.
If a dead woman is walking on the street after an election and gets shot,
is that a vote?
And is beauty in the eye of the beholder, or shall we vote?
The candidate still wants to be in office when the Apocalypse comes.
The dead have voted, the injured have voted, those running from
the polling places have voted, and those in awash in placards have
voted twice.
The dead man has voted with a pen, with a punch card, with a lever, in
ink and blood.
If there were more bread, we would not have to run through the sewers
clutching our ballots.
The dead man has seen the proud fingers of the illiterate, given a vote.
He has stood on line with the gerrymandered, the disenfranchised, the
ones who walked miles to make a mark, the hopeful, the fearful.
Shall the dead man choose among the old and new oppressors?
Shall he vote for the army, the navy, the palace guard, the elite, those
with the common touch, the new paradigm or the public statuary?
The dead man and woman will be sending absentee Ballots.
They are the root and branch, the stem and the leaf of a free society.
2. More about the Dead Man and the Vote
The dead man keeps his powder dry, his lamp turned low, and his eyes
on the sky.
He hears the say-so of change in the breeze, he sees the calligraphic
dance of the reeds, he smells the dust where people ran.
The dead man will speak, and alll the dead will speak, for you cannot
soap the mouths of dead men and women.
He can smell a cleansing storm coming while there are ashes on his tongue.
The dead man has strung together the unlikely.
The despot never sees it coming, even as the voters throw open the
palace doors.
Now the dead man sits down to a meal of rice and kebabs.
He could be talking to his beloved, to an engineer, to the ghost of
Alexander the Great, it is a muttering under his breath.
The dead man has disputed every election.
He hath counted the petitions and depositions, he hath tallied
the ballots.
He hath seen the final figures approaching zero.
He hath placed a pox on the partied equally, on the candidates equally,
on the party-line masses.
For it is only the independent for whom the dead man will vote.
The dead man does not buy and sell his preferences.
He enlists the chaos, he joins the rabble, he leads the caucus,
then leaves.
The dead man is free.
From: Breaking the Jaws of Silence 2013
Prairie Lights sprang to life in May 1978 as a small, intimate bookstore offering titles by the newer voices of Raymond Carver and Alice Munro and by established authors like Eudora Welty and George Orwell.