Blood on Draft Files, Baltimore, 1967 (CTG)

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Blood on Draft Files, Baltimore, 1967

For Dave Eberhardt

The so-red-blood did its job: soldier-blood,
student-blood, verily, the blood of Jesus.

In reality, you poured duck-blood on the files
in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost

(enough for the powers to take notice and act).

An event from another era, a generation ago,
a crime for which you served 2 years in jail;

Phil Berrigan, a Josephite priest doing God's work,
received six years in jail for his "misbehavior"

(the powers had seen, and they had reacted).

I recall how in a poem you roasted quail on a jail
radiator; now, you work with inmates downtown.

Would I have had the courage to get blood on my hands?
At Christmas, we get together with you and Cathy, enjoy

salmon, a bloodless fish. You are aged sixty-nine.
(In the year of your crime, 9,353 GI's died).

Christopher T. George

May 24, 1968: Four men who protested the Vietnam War--
Josephite priest the Rev. Philip Berrigan, Tom Lewis,
James Mengel and poet David Eberhardt--were
sentenced to jail for pouring blood on draft records.
See The Baltimore Four for more information.

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Chris & Donna George with David Eberhardt, Dec. 11 2009,
photograph by Cathy Eberhardt, UFO hovering over TV. :D