Lawrence
Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
DO NOT TAKE PICTURES OF THE TRANSPARENT DESTRUCTION!
Macbeth
to the witches:
How now, you secret,
black, and midnight hags.
A deed
without a name.
-Macbeth IV.i.48-50
Bricks,
freedom, columns, windows that let in light, old trees that shaded the lawns, dignity,
decency, mercy, kindness, self-discipline, honor, precedents ancient and
modern, protections, chapters and verses, the majesty of the law, literature,
music, art, dining with utensils, logic, education, good taste – all must go DO
NOT TAKE PICTURES
Wreckers
guide steel treads
DO NOT TAKE PICTURES Over fragments of Amendment V
Trenchers
rip the
heart DO NOT TAKE PICTURES out
of Amendment IV
Excavators
heave Amendment XXII
DO NOT TAKE PICTURES
into garbage skips
Cranes
stack bits of Amendment VI against a chain link fence
DO NOT TAKE PICTURES
And at
dusk a fire, a big, beautiful fire, chantings and clenched fists while tokens
of the freedom to disagree, freedom from a government religion, freedom to
choose one’s own books, and freedom from fear rise as flame and fire and smoke,
and The People wave their made-in-China gift-shop bibles with the words of Our
Leader printed in red and sing along to the musical stylings of Horst Wessel.
BUT DO NOT TAKE PICTURES
