in the man’s big house
 they built him a three-room suite;
 his children lived here:
 

remnants of slave life:
 hard-hitting and far-reaching
 (Black Lives Matter. Now?)
 
 they dug up red clay
 to lay every brick … by brick,
 by breaking their backs
 

his famous status:
 founder of freedom, writer
 (declared our country)
 

brick by brick by brick
 he laid his lies and kept his slaves
 and wrote our future
 

and we swallow it
 and throw coins at his gravestone
 and try to forgive
 

they all shared this view–
 from the big house; the slave house;
 the land formed by God
 

and so we move on,
 brick by brick by road by road
 to see its beauty