Absalom by Adam Smith

They say your hair was long,

as the years are long in passing;

and memories are long

and stretched thin,

like too little light of a gray dawn.

You remembered every wrong

as you sang a marching song;

and where have all the good men gone,

can you reach them, Absalom?

I remember when you stood there

with the yellow sunlight on your face.

And I forgave you, as I forgive you,

but you, Absalom, you forget no wrong.

Your heart grew like the roots

of a gnarled – of a twisted –

patriarch oak. And you never forgot

even when the earth had forgotten,

but you became rich and black like the soil.

And blood!

Did blood stain your long dark hair

and seep into the conscience of the land?

Did Abel cry out? Did the cattle cry out in horror,

the horror of uncivil war?

But still I forgave you, as I now forgive you,

though you, Absalom, you forget no wrong.

They say your hair grew long,

and they say the branch grew low:

the branch of the oak tree in Ephraim,

and that you hung in the arms of Father Oak

when all your foes surrounded you.

Then they lowered you into the earth

and you stained the soil red.

They covered you,

and they buried you

as if they were planting a seed.

Above the din of empty war,

and above the battle’s dying moan,

rose from the poet king’s raw throat

not an elegy, but a cry:

“My God! My God! My son is dead!”