Emblem | The New Republic

Emblem

The wreck in the valley
no longer has an emblem
but the script of the design
indicates an earlyish Ford.

Henry Ford was a racist,
an anti-Semite, whose eventual
“apology” was likely scripted
and signed by someone else.

The failure of an emblem
to stand for veracity—production-
line business, human
suffering as quotient.

To say Ford was a “pacifist”
is like claiming the machine’s
“neutrality” in the devastation
of country. And the absence

of an emblem doesn’t change
origins of rancour. If
there’s a shift in perception
it’s only because insects

and field mice nest in the wreck,
vegetation sprouting through
its engine cavity. The loss
of the eponymous barely
             emblematic.