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A review by dbjorlin
Native Guard by Natasha Trethewey
4.0
I found the last part of the last poem, "South" (worth the price of the book) to be the most poignant:
"I returned to a country battlefield
where colored troops fought and died--
Port Hudson where their bodies swelled
and blackened beneath the sun--unburied
until earth's green sheet pulled over them,
unmarked by any headstones.
Where the roads, buildings, and monuments
are named to honor the Confederacy,
where the old flags still hangs, I return
to Mississippi, state that made a crime
of me--mulatto, half-breed--native
in my native land, this place they'll bury me."
"I returned to a country battlefield
where colored troops fought and died--
Port Hudson where their bodies swelled
and blackened beneath the sun--unburied
until earth's green sheet pulled over them,
unmarked by any headstones.
Where the roads, buildings, and monuments
are named to honor the Confederacy,
where the old flags still hangs, I return
to Mississippi, state that made a crime
of me--mulatto, half-breed--native
in my native land, this place they'll bury me."