On June 17, 2015, nine members of Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, S.C., including pastor Clementa C. Pinckney, were murdered during Bible study in a racially motivated hate crime.
John Lewis came to shake hands that already
shook—old veterans on the Fourth of July.
He was an archer whose shot arced straight
to the heart of the matter with what he
said, the way he said it. The vets felt the calm
of a man who’d learned the worst thing about
being alive was the people you lived among.
Lewis spoke of how days before he’d gone
to Charleston, when President Obama
went to eulogize Reverend Pinckney.
Lewis told the vets how the people sat
in funeral finery, listened
for memorial meaning, but there was
nothing the President could say.
There were no words of comfort.
So he preached, Lewis said.
Obama opened his mouth—
the grace on an empty stomach poured forth.
Then he closed his mouth—for ten full seconds
he stood, silent—until he looked up and out,
raised his voice up and out, and sang.
Lewis talk of an absence of rhetoric.
He told those old soldiers how mourners were
blessed with sermon, song, silence, how grave
people needed to hear what words couldn’t
say, when their own mouths couldn’t speak,
on a bad day when they just wanted to listen.
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