I wrote this poem about Hart Island, New York's "potter's field," a number
of years ago, and it appears in my collection, Things Seen in Graveyards. This poignant article today in The New York Times revisits
the island to ask what happened to the AIDS victims whose bodies were
sent there. Even the dead were shunned and their coffins were piled up
while workers were afraid to touch them. I wondered sometimes whether my
flight from New York in 1985 was an over-reaction -- a vast majority of
friends and acquaintances had died, and this article confirms that,
noting that 100,000 died in New York during the peak of the epidemic,
making up one quarter of the nation's victims.
Ferry cuts fog
Ferry cuts fog
in
Long Island Sound,
baleful
horn bellowing
a
midnight run
unblessed
by harbor lights,
unknown
to sleeping millions
convicts
at the rails,
guards
behind them,
dour-faced
captain at the helm
a face and a pipe
and a dead-ahead glare,
an
empty gaze that asks no questions
offers no advice
A
careful mooring,
cables thicker than hanging noose
bind ship to pier;
pilings
like pagan columns
bind pier to Hart Island
Convicts
shuffle to the end of the dock,
guards behind them with billy clubs
hands tensed at holster.
You
fellas better behave now,
the captain mutters,
just
do what you're told.
And
no funny business, another voice warns,
'cause
anything could happen to you here.
The
prisoners shiver at moonless expanse
of
blackened water,
dead
shell of Bronx one way,
bedrooms
of Queens the other;
clap
their hands,
blow
on their fingers
to
fight the chill.
Guess
you would freeze, one speculates
before
you could swim to shore.
Just
do what you’re told,
the
biggest con admonishes.
I
been here before. Do what
you’re
told and then it's over.
Eager
to earn
the
early release,
willing
to dig
and
lift and carry,
they
turn to the foreman.
He
points to the tarp
that covers the cargo.
They
lift the tiny oblong boxes,
frail as balsa
thin pine confining
the swaddled contents.
What's
in these things?
one asks, taking on three
stacked to his chin.
Over
there, is all the foreman says,
pointing to mounds
where a silent back hoe
stands sentinel.
These
be coffins, the older con explains.
Baby coffins.
They
lower the boxes
into the waiting holes,
read the tags attached to them:
Baby Boy Franklin
Carl Hernandez
Unknown Baby Girl, Hispanic.
The
adult coffins are heavier,
two men at least to carry each one.
They
can joke about these:
Heavy bastard, this Jose.
Carla here, she musta wasted away.
But
no one speaks about the babies.
The
convicts' eyes grow angry, then sad.
Later
the mounds will be toppled,
the soil returned to the holes,
flattened and tamped
with a cursory blessing
by
an ecumenical chaplain.
These
are the lonely dead,
the snuffout of innocence:
crack
babies
AIDS babies
babies dead from drive-by bullets
babies
abandoned like unwanted kittens
dumpster children
No
wonder this island cries in its sleep.
