Natasha Trethewey: Pastoral

Today, I felt like hearing something Southern, and so this from the Poet Laureate of Mississippi

Pastoral

In the dream, I am with the Fugitive

Poets. We’re gathered for a photograph.
Behind us, the skyline of Atlanta
hidden by the photographer’s backdrop—
a lush pasture, green, full of soft-eyed cows
lowing, a chant that sounds like no, no. Yes,
I say to the glass of bourbon I’m offered.
We’re lining up now—Robert Penn Warren,
his voice just audible above the drone
of bulldozers, telling us where to stand.
Say “Race,” the photographer croons. I’m in
blackface again when the flash freezes us.
My father’s white, I tell them, and rural.
You don’t hate the South, they ask. You don’t hate it?

Natasha Trethewey

from Native Guard (Houghton Mifflin, 2006)