My Face Is an Icon, My Life a Scrim

Music: Hommage a Rameau. By Claude Debussy. Sequenced by Dario Galimberti at Kunst der Fuge.

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Hear me read the poem: As a .wav file As an MP3 file Alpha List Epitaphs Name Poems Poems About Nationality and Race Poems for Other Holidays About This Site Poems for Free Copyright by Nicholas Gordon

My face is an icon, my life a scrim Alight with meaning, my words inscribed Reductively in stone, a hymn To dreams annually revived. In me you found a founding father New, like Lincoln a colossus Late arrived: righteous Other, Unavenging nemesis, The token nigger of American Heroes, aggrieved but restrained, Engaged but non-partisan, Radical but house-trained. Know that I still believe in you, In spite of what you've done to me. Nor can a holiday a truth Give flesh long flayed by memory.