And this is another New Orleans poem.
It has to do with a little-known history.
And it has to do with voices that are channeled.
There was the rage of spiritualism in the middle
of the 19th century.
And in New Orleans, the form that took
were abolitionists of color who practiced spiritualism.
And then, after-- that was before the Civil War--
after the Civil War, they were Reconstructionists,
the governing class of color, who
continued the spiritualist movement
during that great experiment that was reconstruction for 10
years after the Civil War.
There's a little bit of Creole French in this.
I was asked by a historian if I thought
the French Enlightenment philosophers had influenced
the emancipation movements and the revolutionary slave
uprisings in this country.
And I was not an expert but once I looked at the archives,
they were channeling Voltaire, they
were channeling Robespierre, they were channeling Saints--
even the Messiahs.
So yeah.
Maybe, Yeah.
Enlightenment philosophy of individual rights.
"The Treasurer's Daughter, New Orleans 1867-1997."
The epigraph is from Jacques Derrida.
And it is a nod to the incredible archives
across the way.
"The archive is never closed.
It opens out of the future."
But when you're researching in the archives in--
at the University of New Orleans and the history
of Louisiana archives on the fourth floor,
you've got Lake Pontchartrain that stretches
right out to the horizon.
"The archive's an ocean that has horizon
for the far shore of the past.
Pages crenellate like waves at sunset, creamblue ripples
with bird-like readers diving delicately for gnatfacts.
I sit in a boat others call a chair.
The Archivist emeritus crinkles his eyes when he recounts how
he heard tell there was a treasure chest
of 'exceedingly rare Reconstruction documents' kept
by the first Black State Treasurer--
which is to say, creole of color--
post-bellum Louisiana at his daughter's
falling-down mid-city cottage where the widowed son-in-law
still lived.
This was some years ago.
The Widower wasn't sure what was in the chest.
Or wasn't saying.
And wouldn't sell.
The Archivist visited eight times in two years
to wheedle the Widower, each time picking
his way through tens, hundreds, of cats
meowing along the balcony and around his feet.
The pungency gagged the Archivist,
but at last the Widower sold so all effort
paid off for the library housing the Marcus C. Christian history
of the Free People of Color Archive.
On the chest, mold and dust.
The key long lost.
Back with his books, the Archivist jimmied
open the trove--
La plus grande des révolutions, c'est celle qui donnera la liberté.
Un révolutionnaire, c'est un homme de progrès.
C'est se rendre libre.
Votre frère, Voltaire.
Séance on the 6th of February, 1867 house of Valmour.
By P. Dubucler.
Handwritten.
Ink blotted.
Underscored.
'Liberté' overwritten in large letters as if at first unclear.
The whole chest, pages and pages of nothing but transcriptions
of the Treasurer's daughter's Spiritualist sessions
channeling change.
The secret circle broken off before complete--
Il faut que la vérité triomphe enfin,
que la fraternité puisse régner sur la Terre.
Jésus.
The anniversary of the death of Valmour, 6 of February 1869.
Truth.
Brotherhood.
Rain.
Had the Widower who was white Creole forgotten or never known
spirits spoke through his wife whose visions he
safeguarded without question?
Reconstruction reigned 10 years, after which and a long time
that change took 'Liberté' written over and over in larger
and larger letters at first unclear, or--