Uncommon Ground Andrew Tinker ‘16 History and Economics
Where was I standing when John Brown Took up arms to fight a revolution with slaves Under rule of plantation squinting and calculating Virginia They’d entered the equations of rebellious slaves into Their metric of oppression and adjusting the knobs and gears But they hadn’t entered white men giving blood and dying traitors To end inhumanity in slavery they saw non-humans toiling I know I wasn’t at Harper’s Ferry with him seizing federal armament And when he surrendered failed with revolution crashing down With freed slaves dead or imprisoned with gallows strung up around Them but that’s the hallmark of the slave society the noose Constantly bandied about waiting to gobble up necks And the thrashing words of threat and violence each structure For execution speaks volumes in creaking tones straining under bodies John Brown stood on uncommon ground when he said no But it isn’t this man that we should focus on it’s the figures Peering at him with calculating stares trying to wash his feet away In global warming flood waters that sweep foundations from movements Look closely at how the grounds of justice are being muddied By the melted glaciers that stood since humanity first stood from its Broken back huddle in African forests See the rushing roaring rivers bringing away sediment And carrying the graves and foundations away from society The ground we stand on opens its song with the flowers tuning And with great error and price that song can be a wake up alarm To legacies of oppression borne in skins and words and actions And I may not have been standing when John Brown tried to End plantation evils in the South by arming the slaves But I can stand now to say that the ground under our feet is precious That environmental disaster is not socially neutral The ground we stand on isn’t equal and it’s too uncommon To let it be submerged under oceans and seas too large
{The Matrix} │ Fall 2013
15