To transform, then embroider, History
was your remaining life's work, and desire;
to shift the bloodshed's onus and its blame,
to lay the sin and its responsibility
on others who could not disprove your claim;
and to ensure that, when enrolled, his name
should join the decorated, not the damned;
to raise him up to new, heroic fame---
and, deep within its shadow, to have crammed
the truth away (but temporarily);
to deal the public into great pretense
(yet, privately aware of the offense) . . .
these are the skills that you have lately mastered
with all the enterprise that you can muster,
devoted to that cruel, self-righteous bastard,
that General glory hound, George Armstrong Custer;
and prove yourself, although genteel, a liar,
fit for the dark Inferno's hottest fire.
Starward
Author's Notes/Comments:
In the late 60's and early 70's, historians and scholars began to unravel the damage done to the truth by Elizabeth Custer's incessant manipulation of the facts arising from her husband's decisions and actions with regard to the Native American People's. His transgressions are a shame upon the Christian faith and the culture of Western Civilization, and his memory deserves to be villified not only with the most treasonous of historical figures, but also, in some ways, with terrorists (as it can be argued that, from his position of power, he terrorized innocent Native Peoples). I feel privileged to have lived in a time when the Truth of those atrocities has become to come out, and continues to come out. This nation, or the Christian part of it, should seek and accept penance for the cruel murders perpetrated in its name by George Armstrong Custer and the 7th Cavalry.
This is actually a second posting of this poem. I removed the original because it was, in my opinion, being used as a platform for a series of rants written by a person I shall not name, and who is not welcome to comment on my poems. For reasons unclear to me from this person's somewhat illogical prose, her dislike of the poem was due to my failure to acknowledge the larger picture in which the Massacre and "Custer's Last Stand" happened. Apparently, in this person's view, I am short-sighted in not writing about that; but, after all, I am not qualified to write of it, and an epic would be required to do so. (Like Propertius. I am not "up to" an epic poem about anything.)
So I will state clearly, once more, that the sole purpose of this poem is not to discuss the United States' shameful policies with respect to the Native American peoples; but, simply and solely, to call into question Elizabeth's Custer's motives in deliberately manipulating the heroification of her husband in order to falsify historical truths. If I have any model for this, it would certainly be some of Alexander Pope's poems.
