For the Confederate Dead Quotes

“Back then we'd get grievously
drunk & wander laughing

Now drunk with grief
I'm again hungry
& hate that you are dead.”
― Kevin Young, For the Confederate Dead

“How humid
the heart, its messy
rooms! We eat spicy
food, sweat like wood

& smolder like the coal
mine that caught fire
decades ago, yet still smokes”
― Kevin Young, For the Confederate Dead

“O earth
of a thousand exits

O endless
endings--
Why does waiting
feel like pain

& pain waiting?”
― Kevin Young, For the Confederate Dead

“And tomorrow
back to the work
that is life, grief, what's

left”
― Kevin Young, For the Confederate Dead

“We held each other a long time
after and could not speak,
like you.”
― Kevin Young, For the Confederate Dead

“There's no immunity
against grief--”
― Kevin Young, For the Confederate Dead

“I meant it that last time
when I said I'd see you
soon, wanted to visit you fat

& happy, well maybe
just happy as everyone agrees
at last you were.”
― Kevin Young, For the Confederate Dead

“I cannot forgive
this world, its gear's unsteady turn,
that day's sun that shone
While you died trying to get home.”
― Kevin Young, For the Confederate Dead

“When you died I was reading Whitman
aloud.
While you died I was miles away,
thousands of deserts and oceans
and mountains and plain.
When you went I was reading aloud the end
to a crowd trying
to remember how grief once felt,
wanting to forget,
wanting not to.”
― Kevin Young, For the Confederate Dead

“The world is a widow.”
― Kevin Young, For the Confederate Dead

“And one day, when, I will cross
Great Water, walk and reach
that final rise

to find them
singing.”
― Kevin Young, For the Confederate Dead

“These are the last days
my television says. Tornadoes, more
rain, overcast, a chance

of sun but I do not
trust weathermen,
never have.”
― Kevin Young, For the Confederate Dead

“Pratfalls and close calls
Cartoon the room”
― Kevin Young, For the Confederate Dead

“When we at last reach
Paradise, it is smaller, and dirtier
Than we expect”
― Kevin Young, For the Confederate Dead

“My magpiety”
― Kevin Young, For the Confederate Dead

“What we gather, we are”
― Kevin Young, For the Confederate Dead

“Evenings I return with my head
Soaked with stars--place
A crown crafted of foil
On my head and set to work

By day I sweep the school
Nights I piece together heaven
The way God intended:
By hand, by saving
What some would throw away

No one sees scraps are what saves”
― Kevin Young, For the Confederate Dead

“The Revolution's Step-Daughters
will not let
Marion Anderson clear
her brown throat

onstage, among the blinding lights
of Constitution Hall--
it will take a First Lady to invite
Anderson to thrill

a throng at Lincoln's stone feet.
(In the wings, Anderson trills
the me-me-me
of practice drills.)

Like sky her throat is clear.
Everywhere,
folks stop to hear her
voice's bright thunder--”
― Kevin Young, For the Confederate Dead

“Whenever a group of us coloreds
would be gathered, you know,
talking, all it’d take is two, three cops
to come along and sound
us down. The others ran—
I’d stand my ground—

One’d take his stick
and jab me in my stomach.
I’d call him a son of a b
all while he was hitting me.

[Silence.]”
― Kevin Young, For the Confederate Dead

“Back then Baltimore had
the racial discrimination--
but you're too young to recollect.”
― Kevin Young, For the Confederate Dead

“America, won't you take
your hands of hurt away?
tuck them drawer-deep
like the good
silver of grandmothers?

(I have inherited, America, only
rusty knees, a voice
hoarse from hollering.)

America I have counted
all the china and none
is missing.

America, I love most your rust,
the signs that misspell doom--”
― Kevin Young, For the Confederate Dead

“America, I am letting you in.
America, where you been?”
― Kevin Young, For the Confederate Dead

“America, I can’t leave you
well enough alone.

America, you’ve lost
your way home—”
― Kevin Young, For the Confederate Dead

“What mountains you are
America! What minefields
and mysteries, symptoms
and cinemas and symphonies
and cemeteries!”
― Kevin Young, For the Confederate Dead

“America, you won’t obey.
You won’t hunt
or heel or stay.

America, you won’t do
anything I want you to.
(To tell the truth,
I like that about you.)

You’re too much.”
― Kevin Young, For the Confederate Dead

“Old Exit 9 doesn't mind
opening up
a can of whupass,
help yourself.”
― Kevin Young, For the Confederate Dead

“Old Exit 9 gave peace a chance
Old Exit 9 has no regrets
Thinks Cleveland's exotic
& Akron's next”
― Kevin Young, For the Confederate Dead

“Old Exit 9

sells Fireworks & Karate Supplies
is now Exit 29
is handy with a knife
wants what it wants
when it wants it.”
― Kevin Young, For the Confederate Dead

“We work all night
at the unhappiness plant

where no one gets laid
off, pull down
a decent wage.”
― Kevin Young, For the Confederate Dead

“Termites & tow trucks & the Sheriff
Dept in which we each are deputies, except
those who ain't, who never will be. The no
good know it, and love that too--”
― Kevin Young, For the Confederate Dead