A Wreath for Emmett Till Read online

  A Wreath for Emmett Till

  Marilyn Nelson

  * * *

  A WREATH FOR EMMETT TILL

  MARILYN NELSON

  ILLUSTRATED BY PHILIPPE LARDY

  Houghton Mifflin Company

  Boston

  * * *

  FOR INNOCENCE MURDERED. FOR INNOCENCE ALIVE. —M.N.

  TO ARIANE. —P.F.

  THE AUTHOR WOULD LIKE TO EXPRESS HER DEEP GRATITUDE

  TO THE J. S. GUGGENHEIM MEMORIAL FOUNDATION FOR A FELLOWSHIP,

  AND TO THE UNIVERSITY OF DELAWARE,

  WHICH FREED HER FROM A YEAR OF TEACHING SO THAT SHE COULD WRITE.

  Text copyright © 2005 by Marilyn Nelson

  Illustrations copyright © 2005 by Philippe Lardy

  All rights reserved. For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book,

  write to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Company, 215 Park Avenue South, New York, New York 10003.

  www.houghtonmifflinbooks.com

  The text of this book is set in Concord Nova.

  The illustrations are tempera on cardboard.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Nelson, Marilyn, 1946–

  A wreath for Emmett Till / Marilyn Nelson ; illustrated by Philippe Lardy.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 0-618-39752-3

  1. Till, Emmett, 1941–1955–Juvenile poetry. 2. African Americans–Crimes against–Juvenile poetry. 3.

  African American teenage boys–Juvenile poetry. 4. Trials (Murder)–Juvenile poetry. 5. Murder victims–Juvenile poetry.

  6. Hate crimes–Juvenile poetry. 7. Mississippi–Juvenile poetry. 8. Lynching–Juvenile poetry.

  9. Children's poetry, American. I. Lardy, Philippe. II. Title.

  PS3573.A4795W73 2005

  811'.54-dc22

  2004009205

  ISBN-13: 978-0618-39752-5

  Printed in Singapore

  TWP 10 9 8 7 6

  * * *

  How I Came to Write This Poem

  I was nine years old when Emmett Till was lynched in 1955. His name and history have been a part of most of my life. When I decided to write a poem about lynching for young people, I knew that I would write about Emmett Till. He was lynched when he was the age of the young people who might read my poem. After revisiting what I knew about lynching, reading more about it, and growing increasingly depressed, I also knew that I would write this poem as a heroic crown of sonnets.

  A sonnet is a fourteen-line rhyming poem in iambic pentameter. The rhyme scheme I chose to use in these sonnets is called Italian, or Petrarchan (after Petrarch, 1304–1374, the poet who invented it). A crown of sonnets is a sequence of interlinked sonnets in which the last line of one becomes the first line, sometimes slightly altered, of the next. A heroic crown of sonnets is a sequence of fifteen interlinked sonnets, in which the last one is made up of the first lines of the preceding fourteen.

  When I decided to use this form, I had seen only one heroic crown of sonnets, a fantastically beautiful poem by the Danish poet Inger Christensen. Instead of thinking too much about the painful subject of lynching, I thought about what Inger Christensen's strategy must have been. The strict form became a kind of insulation, a way of protecting myself from the intense pain of the subject matter, and a way to allow the Muse to determine what the poem would say. I wrote this poem with my heart in my mouth and tears in my eyes, breathless with anticipation and surprise.

  A WREATH FOR

  EMMETT TILL

  R.I.P EMMETT LOUIS TILL 1941–1955

  Rosemary for remembrance, Shakespeare wrote:

  a speech for poor Ophelia, who went mad

  when her love killed her father. Flowers had

  a language then. Rose petals in a note

  said, I love you; a sheaf of bearded oat

  said, Your music enchants me. Goldenrod:

  Be careful. Weeping-willow twigs: I'm sad.

  What should my wreath for Emmett Till denote?

  First, heliotrope, for Justice shall be done.

  Daisies and white lilacs, for Innocence.

  Then mandrake: Honor (wearing a white hood,

  or bare-faced, laughing). For grief, more than one,

  for one is not enough: rue, yew, cypress.

  Forget-me-nots. Though if I could, I would

  Forget him not. Though if I could, I would

  forget much of that racial memory.

  No: I remember, like a haunted tree

  set off from other trees in the wildwood

  by one bare bough. If trees could speak, it could

  describe, in words beyond words, make us see

  the strange fruit that still ghosts its reverie,

  misty companion of its solitude.

  Dendrochronology could give its age

  in centuries, by counting annual rings:

  seasons of drought and rain. But one night, blood,

  spilled at its roots, blighted its foliage.

  Pith outward, it has been slowly dying,

  pierced by the screams of a shortened childhood.

  Pierced by the screams of a shortened childhood,

  my heartwood has been scarred for fifty years

  by what I heard, with hundreds of green ears.

  That jackal laughter. Two hundred years I stood

  listening to small struggles to find food,

  to the songs of creature life, which disappears

  and comes again, to the music of the spheres.

  Two hundred years of deaths I understood.

  Then slaughter axed one quiet summer night,

  shivering the deep silence of the stars.

  A running boy, five men in close pursuit.

  One dark, five pale faces in the moonlight.

  Noise, silence, back-slaps. One match, five cigars.

  Emmett Till's name still catches in the throat.

  Emmett Till's name still catches in my throat,

  like syllables waylaid in a stutterer's mouth.

  A fourteen-year-old stutterer, in the South

  to visit relatives and to be taught

  the family's ways. His mother had finally bought

  that White Sox cap; she'd made him swear an oath

  to be careful around white folks. She'd told him the truth

  of many a Mississippi anecdote:

  Some white folks have blind souls. In his suitcase

  she'd packed dungarees, T-shirts, underwear,

  and comic books. She'd given him a note

  for the conductor, waved to his chubby face,

  wondered if he'd remember to brush his hair.

  Her only child. A body left to bloat.

  Your only child, a body thrown to bloat,

  mother of sorrows, of justice denied.

  Surely you must have thought of suicide,

  seeing his gray flesh, chains around his throat.

  Surely you didn't know you would devote

  the rest of your changed life to dignified

  public remembrance of how Emmett died,

  innocence slaughtered by the hands of hate.

  If sudden loving light proclaimed you blest

  would you bow your head in humility,

  your healed heart overflow with gratitude?

  Would you say yes, like the mother of Christ?

  Or would you say no to your destiny,

  mother of a boy martyr, if you could?

  Mutilated boy martyr, if I could,

  I'd put you in a parallel universe,

  give you a better fate. There is none worse.

  I'd let you live through a happy boyhood,

  let your gifts bloom into a livelihood />
  on a planet that didn't bear Cain's curse.

  I'd put you in a nice, safe universe,

  not like this one. A universe where you'd

  surpass your mother's dreams. But parallel

  realities may have terrorists, too.

  Evil multiplies to infinitude,

  like mirrors facing each other in hell.

  You were a wormhole history passed through,

  transformed by the memory of your victimhood.

  Erase the memory of Emmett's victimhood.

  Let's write the obituary of a life

  lived well and wisely, mourned by a loving wife

  or partner, friends, and a vast multitude.

  Remember the high purpose he pursued.

  Remember how he earned a nation's grief.

  Remember accomplishments beyond belief,

  honors enough to make us ooh, slack-jawed,

  as if we looked up at a meteor shower

  or were children watching a fireworks display.

  Let America remember what he taught.

  Or at least let him die in a World Trade tower

  rescuing others, that unforgettable day,

  that memory of monsters, that bleak thought.

  The memory of monsters: That bleak thought

  should be confined to a horror-movie world.

  A horror classic, in which a blind girl

  hears, one by one, the windows broken out,

  an ax at the front door. In the onslaught

  of terror, as a hate-filled body hurls

  itself against her door, her senses swirl

  around one prayer: Please, God, forget me not.

  The body-snatchers jiggle the doorknob,

  werewolves and vampires slaver after blood,

  the circus of nightmares is here. She screams,

  he screams, neighbors with names he knows, a mob

  heartless and heedless, answering to no god,

  tears through the patchwork drapery of our dreams.

  Tears, through the patchwork drapery of dream,

  for the hanging bodies, the men on flaming pyres,

  the crowds standing around like devil choirs,

  the children's eyes lit by the fire's gleams

  filled with the delight of licking ice cream,

  men who hear hog screams as a man expires,

  watch-fob good-luck charms teeth pulled out with pliers,

  sinners I can't believe Christ's death redeems,

  your ash hair, Shulamith-Emmett, your eye,

  machetes, piles of shoes, bulldozed mass graves,

  the broken towers, the air filled with last breaths,

  the blasphemies pronounced to justify

  the profane, obscene theft of human lives.

  Let me gather spring flowers for a wreath.

  Let me gather spring flowers for a wreath.

  Not lilacs from the dooryard, but wildflowers

  I'd search for in the greening woods for hours

  of solitude, meditating on death.

  Let me wander through pathless woods, beneath

  the choirs of small birds trumpeting their powers

  at the intruder trampling through their bowers,

  disturbing their peace. I cling to the faith

  that innocence lives on, that a blind soul

  can see again. That miracles do exist.

  In my house, there is still something called grace,

  which melts ice shards of hate and makes hearts whole.

  I bear armloads of flowers home, to twist

  into a circle: trillium, Queen Anne's lace...

  Trillium, apple blossoms, Queen Anne's lace,

  woven with oak twigs, for sincerity...

  Thousands of oak trees around this country

  groaned with the weight of men slain for their race,

  their murderers acquitted in almost every case.

  One night five black men died on the same tree,

  with toeless feet, in this Land of the Free.

  This country we love has a Janus face:

  One mouth speaks with forked tongue, the other reads

  the Constitution. My country, 'tis of both

  thy nightmare history and thy grand dream,

  thy centuries of good and evil deeds,

  I sing. Thy fruited plain, thy undergrowth

  of mandrake, which flowers white as moonbeams.

  Indian pipe bloodroot. White as moonbeams,

  their flowers. Picked, one blackens, and one bleeds

  a thick red sap. Indian pipe, a weed

  that thrives on rot, is held in disesteem,

  though it does have its use in nature's scheme,

  unlike the rose. The bloodroot poppy needs

  no explanation here: Its red sap pleads

  the case for its inclusion in the theme

  of a wreath for the memory of Emmett Till.

  Though the white poppy means forgetfulness,

  who could forget, when red sap on a wreath

  recalls the brown boy five white monsters killed?

  Forgetting would call for consciencelessness.

  Like the full moon, which smiled calmly on his death.

  Like the full moon, which smiled calmly on his death.

  Like the stars, which fluttered their quicksilver wings.

  Like the unbroken song creation sings

  while humankind tramples the grapes of wrath.

  Like wildflowers growing beside the path

  a boy was dragged along, blood spattering

  their white petals as he, abandoning

  all hope, gasped his agonizing last breath.

  Like a nation sending its children off to fight

  our faceless enemy, immortal fear,

  the most feared enemy of the human race.

  Like a plague of not knowing wrong from right.

  Like the consciencelessness of the atmosphere.

  Like a gouged eye, watching boots kick a face.

  Like his gouged eye, which watched boots kick his face,

  we must bear witness to atrocity.

  But we are whole: We can speak what we see.

  People may disappear, leaving no trace,

  unless we stand before the populace,

  orators denouncing the slavery

  to fear. For the lynchers feared the lynchee,

  what he might do, being of another race,

  a great unknown. They feared because they saw

  their own inner shadows, their vicious dreams,

  the farthest horizons of their own thought,

  their jungles immune to the rule of law.

  We can speak now, or bear unforgettable shame.

  Rosemary for remembrance, Shakespeare wrote.

  Rosemary for remembrance, Shakespeare wrote.

  If I could forget, believe me, I would.

  Pierced by the screams of a shortened childhood,

  Emmett Till's name still catches in my throat.

  Mamie's one child, a body thrown to bloat,

  Mutilated boy martyr. If I could

  Erase the memory of Emmett's victimhood,

  The memory of monsters ... That bleak thought

  Tears through the patchwork drapery of dreams.

  Let me gather spring flowers for a wreath:

  Trillium, apple blossoms, Queen Anne's lace,

  Indian pipe, bloodroot, white as moonbeams,

  Like the full moon, which smiled calmly on his death,

  Like his gouged eye, which watched boots kick his face.

  * * *

  Who was Emmett Till?

  Emmett Louis Till was born in Chicago on July 25, 1941. He was a friendly, extroverted African American boy who grew up during a time when racism and segregation were legal parts of the culture of the United States.

  In the summer of 1955, fourteen-year-old Emmett visited relatives in the South. On August 24, in the town of Money, Mississippi, Emmett went into a country sto
re, where, by some accounts, he whistled at a white woman. On August 28, the woman's husband and brother-in-law took Emmett from his uncle's house. Emmett's body was found three days later. The murderers had tied a heavy metal cotton gin fan to his neck with barbed wire and thrown him into the Tallahatchie River. He had been shot in the head. His face and body had been beaten and were bloated from the river water.

  Emmett's mother, Mamie Till Mobley, held an open-casket funeral in Chicago to show what had been done to her son. Thousands of people stood in line for the viewing. Graphic photos appeared in newspapers and magazines, galvanizing anger across the nation.

  An all-white male jury heard the trial of the alleged murderers in a segregated courthouse in Mississippi. In spite of the terrors of the times and the danger he could have been placing himself in, Emmett's uncle identified the white men who had pulled Emmett out of his house. After deliberating for just over an hour, the jurors came back with a verdict of not guilty. The trial and verdict drew the world's attention.

  People around the country-both black and white-who previously had felt separated from southern racism were shocked by Emmett Till's death and outraged by the injustice of his killers' trial. The lynching of the boy Emmett Till helped spark the civil rights movement of the late 1950s and 1960s.

  Months after the trial, one of the former defendants told a reporter how they had killed Emmett. Years later, the two men tried for Emmett's murder said that three others were involved.

  * * *

  Sonnet Notes

  I.

  This sonnet alludes to act iv, scene v of Shakespeare's Hamlet, when Ophelia, driven mad by grief for her murdered father, says, "There's rosemary, that's for remembrance; pray, love, remember: and there is pansies. That's for thoughts." The idea of a language of flowers is an ancient tradition.

  II.

  This sonnet alludes first to an earlier poem, "The Haunted Oak," by Paul Laurence Dunbar. In Dunbar's poem, an oak tree describes a lynching. The second allusion is to "Strange Fruit," a poem about lynching written by Lewis Allen and made famous as a song by the great blues singer Billie Holiday. Dendrochronology is the science of telling a tree's age by counting the rings in its trunk.