<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html charset=utf-8"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">For the Union Dead</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""><i style="font-size: 14px;" class="">“Delinquent Omnia Servare Rem Publicam.”</i></div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">The old South Boston Aquarium stands</div><div class="">in a Sahara of snow now. Its broken windows are boarded.</div><div class="">The bronze weathervane cod has lost half its scales.</div><div class="">The airy tanks are dry. </div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Once my nose crawled like a snail on the glass;</div><div class="">my hand tingled</div><div class="">to burst the bubbles</div><div class="">drifting from the noses of the cowed, compliant fish. </div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">My hand draws back. I often sigh still</div><div class="">for the dark downward and vegetating kingdom</div><div class="">of the fish and reptile. One morning last March,</div><div class="">I pressed against the new barbed and galvanized</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">fence on the Boston Common. Behind their cage,</div><div class="">yellow dinosaur steamshovels were grunting</div><div class="">as they cropped up tons of mush and grass</div><div class="">to gouge their underworld garage. </div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Parking spaces luxuriate like civic</div><div class="">sandpiles in the heart of Boston.</div><div class="">A girdle of orange, Puritan-pumpkin colored girders</div><div class="">braces the tingling Statehouse, </div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">shaking over the excavations, as it faces Colonel Shaw</div><div class="">and his bell-cheeked Negro infantry</div><div class="">on St. Gaudens’ shaking Civil War relief,</div><div class="">propped by a plank splint against the garage’s earthquake. </div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Two months after marching through Boston,</div><div class="">half the regiment was dead;</div><div class="">at the dedication,</div><div class="">William James could almost hear the bronze Negroes breathe. </div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Their monument sticks like a fishbone</div><div class="">in the city’s throat.</div><div class="">Its Colonel is as lean</div><div class="">as a compass-needle. </div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">He has an angry wrenlike vigilance,</div><div class="">a greyhound’s gentle tautness;</div><div class="">he seems to wince at pleasure,</div><div class="">and suffocate for privacy.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">He is out of bounds now. He rejoices in man’s lovely,</div><div class="">peculiar power to choose life and die—</div><div class="">when he leads his black soldiers to death,</div><div class="">he cannot bend his back. </div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">On a thousand small town New England greens,</div><div class="">the old white churches hold their air</div><div class="">of sparse, sincere rebellion; frayed flags</div><div class="">quilt the graveyards of the Grand Army of the Republic.</div><div class=""> </div><div class="">The stone statues of the abstract Union Soldier</div><div class="">grow slimmer and younger each year—</div><div class="">wasp-waisted, they doze over muskets</div><div class="">and muse through their sideburns . . . </div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Shaw’s father wanted no monument</div><div class="">except the ditch,</div><div class="">where his son’s body was thrown</div><div class="">and lost with his “niggers.” </div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">The ditch is nearer.</div><div class="">There are no statues for the last war here;</div><div class="">on Boylston Street, a commercial photograph</div><div class="">shows Hiroshima boiling </div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">over a Mosler Safe, the “Rock of Ages”</div><div class="">that survived the blast. Space is nearer.</div><div class="">When I crouch to my television set,</div><div class="">the drained faces of Negro school-children rise like balloons. </div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Colonel Shaw</div><div class="">is riding on his bubble,</div><div class="">he waits</div><div class="">for the blessèd break. </div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">The Aquarium is gone. Everywhere,</div><div class="">giant finned cars nose forward like fish;</div><div class="">a savage servility</div><div class="">slides by on grease.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>- Robert Lowell</div><div class=""><br class=""></div></body></html>