President Obama spoke of the murder of Matthew Shepard and paid tribute to him when he spoke at HRC last night. He honored the efforts of his parents who have made glbt hate crimes legislation a reality. Matthew’s death symbolised so many crimes, violence and indignities against gay people. I personally was profoundly affected by it. The Philadelphia Inquirer published my fed up reaction to the entrenched homophobia that fuels antigay violence.
The following is a poem written shortly after Matthew’s death in 1998, published here for the first time, on the eve of the passage of legislation that bears Matthew’s name.
Elegy for Matthew Shepard
‘aubergine streaks through clouds of mercy, blue fields of warmth.’
from Sun Photo
What subtle morbidities are
piled on the wind
blown across the plain
everlasting in its own dust.
what images return
what putrid divinities are
planted with the soil
tilled yearly andnow in this field
a perrenial hoarfrost
what livid indignities
were suffered upon
his body, echoing
the cries of a slain eagle
faded across
the canyon without a cry.
and the slayer’s rancid
secrets are falsified for eventual
pitiable reasons
the truths expeled
from consciousness
imprinted underleaf
rested on the
pile of incestuous lies
for more
the broken body speaks.
to this legacy
another killing season
this is finally
caustic ground
pliant and unyielded
lush and acrid
generous and hateful
sensuous and putrid
this again.
Comes in with an
anonymous law
barren of logic
rich with iniquity.
The time of
savage men
you may win the day
on a splitrail
but slaughter your
souls to oblivious vermin
whose feasts are
your mother’s blood
your father’s bone.
Gay sons and daughters
In your time
Do not wait for any season
longer than now.
Alternatetakes2 