Today marks the 45th anniversary of the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, that killed four young girls—Addie Mae Collins, Denise McNair, Carole Roberts, Cynthia Wesley—and ensuing riots in which Virgil Ware and Johnny Robinson were killed.

I've written about this day again and again and will continue to do so, probably until I stop writing.

Today, I remember this way:

ELEGY FOR LITTLE GIRLS

     Sloss Furnaces, Birmingham, September 16th 1963

Puncture the mud, the iron pours out

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tongue of fire, not a word

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stays still but breaks along the channels

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pressed in the cast floor’s sand.

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Now it’s pigs suckling at the sow’s

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iron teats, so many children blind

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to the air and world that harden them.

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A gift. Dark come on. When

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the slag-man pulls the plug, fire

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explodes, its violent, molten light

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bathes the irons, a glow on their spines

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like stained glass or twilight fades

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on headstones’ crests, row on row on row.