Robert Lowell

"Relinquunt Omnia Servare Rem Publicam."

The old South Boston Aquarium¹ stands

in a Sahara of snow now. Its broken windows are boarded.

The bronze weathervane cod² has lost half its scales.

The airy tanks are dry.

Once my nose crawled like a snail³ on the glass；

my hand tingled⁴

to burst the bubbles

drifting from the noses of the cowed， compliant⁵ fish.

My hand draws back. I often sigh still

for the dark downward and vegetating⁶ kingdom

of the fish and reptile⁷. One morning last March，

I pressed against the new barbed and galvanized

fence on the Boston Common. Behind their cage，

yellow dinosaur⁸ steamshovels were grunting⁹

as they cropped up tons of mush and grass

to gouge¹⁰ their underworld garage.

Parking spaces luxuriate like civic¹¹

sandpiles in the heart of Boston.

A girdle of orange， Puritan-pumpkin colored girders

braces¹² the tingling¹³ Statehouse，

shaking over the excavations¹⁴， as it faces Colonel Shaw

and his bell-cheeked Negro infantry¹⁵

on St. Gaudens' shaking Civil War relief，

propped¹⁶ by a plank¹⁷ splint against the garage's earthquake.

Two months after marching through Boston，

half the regiment¹⁸ was dead；

at the dedication¹⁹，

William James could almost hear the bronze Negroes breathe.

Their monument sticks like a fishbone

in the city's throat.

Its Colonel is as lean

as a compass-needle.

He has an angry wrenlike vigilance，

a greyhound's gentle tautness²⁰；

he seems to wince²¹ at pleasure，

and suffocate²² for privacy.

He is out of bounds now. He rejoices in man's lovely，

peculiar²³ power to choose life and die -

when he leads his black soldiers to death，

he cannot bend his back.

On a thousand small town New England greens，

the old white churches hold their air

of sparse²⁴， sincere rebellion； frayed²⁵ flags

quilt the graveyards²⁶ of the Grand Army of the Republic.

The stone statues of the abstract Union Soldier

grow slimmer and younger each year -

wasp-waisted， they doze²⁷ over muskets²⁸

and muse²⁹ through their sideburns……

Shaw's father wanted no monument

except the ditch，

where his son's body was thrown

and lost with his "niggers."

The ditch is nearer.

There are no statues for the last war here；

on Boylston Street， a commercial photograph

shows Hiroshima boiling

over a Mosler Safe， the "Rock of Ages"

that survived the blast. Space is nearer.

When I crouch³⁰ to my television set，

the drained faces of Negro school-children rise like balloons.

Colonel Shaw

is riding on his bubble，

he waits

for the blessèd break.

The Aquarium is gone. Everywhere，

giant finned³¹ cars nose forward like fish；

a savage³² servility

slides by on grease.

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