Jim Limber the Adopted Mulatto Son of Jefferson Davis Visits His Adoptive Parents After the War
The man said I could see them if I wanted
He said America would never be
A place where we could live together not at
Least in my lifetime but the damned don’t see
No important differences between the Ne-
gro and the White the damned don’t see no bad
In folks if what bad they done they ain’t free-
ly chose to do the damned don’t see no good
In folks if what good they done they ain’t hoped
To do and the man he said part of momma
Varina part of daddy Jeff alread-
y was burning in Hell I ought to join them
He said we might see good from seeing each other
Tortured we might finally see each other
Copyright © 2016 by Shane McCrae. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on June 8, 2016, by the Academy of American Poets.
“One morning, as she drove her carriage home from running errands, Varina Davis saw a mixed-race child being beaten by a black woman, presumably his mother. She took the child, a seven year-old named Jim Limber, from the woman, and brought him home to live with herself and her husband, Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederate States of America. Limber was, in turn, taken from the Davises a little over a year later, when the the Union Army captured them in Irwinville, Georgia, and he never saw them again.”
—Shane McCrae
Shane McCrae
Shane McCrae is the author of eight poetry collections, including Cain Named the Animal (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2022).