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DRAGON DAYS & SERPENT NIGHTS

(Trying desperately to forget, yet remembering poignantly Jackson State College and Kent State University.)

OCTAVE LILLY, JR.

I

Our days were nightmares then, our restless nights
  a dreadful wakefulness.  Fears preyed upon
  our minds as snipers preyed in open season;
  for neither sun by day nor moon at night
  was a deterrent to their daring; thus
  the hunters trained hard sights on tender game,
  and claimed a bloody bagful with the maim
  and kill of youthful human animals.

II

Any night or day we feared a
  cordon of illegal troops-
  euphemistically known as
  "officers of the law"-
  might direct a volley
  of machine gun fire
  flush into a black girls'
  unprotected dormitory:
  Jackson State, remember?
   (Were the villains' roles portrayed
  under auspices of night,
  or the aegis of a day?)

Or we fretted that a similar
  "volley" might pursue as targets
  faces of incredulous
  sons of white America:
  Kent State U, remember?
   (Were with daughters, too,
  in the range of fire?)

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