William Woolfitt
Mountain Sweep
My story ought to be told.
Begin with a truant child someone sees,
an unkempt girl, a boy with bad teeth—
if a neighbor alerts the police, if relatives
complain, it won’t be long: welfare agents
ride horses up some rutted creekbed,
school supervisors trace the rough lane
winding around the mountain, visit a cabin
under the blighted chestnuts—then deputies
bring the cars, with room in the back seats
for gathering the children in twos or threes:
a girl in a ragged dress—she’s been caught
seducing her uncle—take her sister too,
just in case, and a boy in ripped denim,
barefoot, no underwear, a runaway
whose stepfather whips him, wild children
from Brush Mountain, the hemlock coves
below Thunder Knob, the dark interior
of the Blue Ridge where Skyline Drive
and the park will be, once the farmers
are made to leave. Families spreading
like weeds, empty mouths, not enough
bread and salt pork, sallow ragamuffins
dressed in tatters, in fertilizer sacks, hiding
in the woods from strangers—commit all
to the Virginia State Colony for Epileptics
and Feebleminded. Treat immoral,
low-grade children with kitchen chores,
farm work, the blind room, and surgeries—
clamp off or sear a girl’s fallopian tubes,
a boy’s sperm ducts—beat out degeneracy
and pauperism like dirt from a rug,
keep bloodlines tidy and clean.