Natasha Trethewey - Elegy for the Native Guard lyrics

We leave Gulfport at noon; gulls overhead trailing the boat—streamers, noisy fanfare— all the way to Ship Island. What we see first is the fort, its roof of gra**, a lee— half reminder of the men who served there— a weathered monument to some of the dead. Inside we follow the ranger, hurried though we are to get to the beach. He tells of graves lost in the Gulf, the island split in half when Hurricane Camille hit, shows us casemates, cannons, the store that sells souvenirs, tokens of history long buried. The Daughters of the Confederacy has placed a plaque here, at the fort's entrance— each Confederate soldier's name raised hard in bronze; no names carved for the Native Guards— 2nd Regiment, Union men, black phalanx. What is monument to their legacy? All the grave markers, all the crude headstones— water-lost. Now fish dart among their bones, and we listen for what the waves intone. Only the fort remains, near forty feet high, round, unfinished, half open to the sky, the elements—wind, rain—God's deliberate eye.