Crystal Williams

Parable of the Ancestors

There was no poetry in the men who erected these buildings
atop the twenty thousand africans nestled in their burial ground, there
in the middle of our great city; there was no one to say, stop,
you, respect & let them rest. Instead, the buildings grew up,
the city groaned & stretched itself wide & wide. Folks were
forgotten. The millions of stories packed one onto the other, ghosts
bumping & pulling around the city’s great halls,
whispered around the neighborhoods until someone said,
wait, our brothers’ bones are under here, someone,
shouldn’t we dig them up?

If our world is to work & make good & true, make due, leave them be
where they are but write it in the books that the children will read
& be tested on. Holding up this great american city, this great
america: the bones of our brothers. This is our closet,
children, bones & buildings & blood. No bigger truth than this:
In the dark crevices, over top & underneath are the dark bones,
the dark blood, everywhere. Everywhere.

note: from 1712-1790, upwards of 20,000 freed and enslaved africans
were buried in a 5-6 acre site in New York City. The burial ground
was discovered in the 1990s.