On a thousand small town New England greens
the old white churches hold their air
of sparse, sincere rebellion; frayed flags
quilt the graveyards of the Grand Army of the Republic
The stone statues of the abstract Union Soldier
grow slimmer and younger each year-
wasp-waisted, they doze over muskets
and muse through their sideburns…
Shaw's father wanted no monument
except the ditch,
where his son's body was thrown
and lost with his 'niggers.'
The ditch is nearer.
There are no statues for the last war here;
on Boylston Street, a commercial photograph
shows Hiroshima boiling
Nearer to what? Nearer to the hearts of those who knew what happened? Nearer to us, and how we react to war? Does the ditch from the construction earlier in the poem make the ditch which Shaw was put in more accessible? Images of entombment (whether Shaw in the ditch or modern people in an underground parking garage) run through this poem.
For the Union Dead