Hymn of My Republic




Summer of my dumb awakening,
nineteen fifty-six, a solitary

neighbor man who walked every day to the mill
through south Lorain with a gimpy stride

and lived alone above the bar of our fathers
emerged into light

and passed around us boys
who chanced to be nearby

and not afraid
some cool gear

from his war,
number WW II.

I got the leather pilot's hat, oh lord.
I put it on

and nothing could touch me
wandering long into the dusk,

hymn of my republic
on my lips, my rough spirit

raised up somehow into glory, that boy's
grave initiative,

that blood
spilled first in the roses.

        --Bruce Weigl, Sweet Lorain, copyright 1996 by Bruce Weigl

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(Ed. note: RT Transit in Sacramento used to feature poems on ads inside buses, which was how I first came across Weigl's work during the summer of 1998.)

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