Juneteenth by Ralph Ellison

. Suddenly, through the sonorous lilt and tear of his projecting voice, the Senator was distracted. As he grasped the dimly lit lectern and concentrated on the faces of colleagues seated below him behind circular, history-stained desks, his eyes had been attracted by a turbulence centering around the rich emblazonry of the Great Seal. High across the chamber and affixed midpoint in the curving sweep of the distant visitors' gallery, the national coat-of-arms had ripped from its moorings and was hurtling down toward him with the transparent insubstantiality of a cinematic image that had somehow gone out of control.

Increasing alarmingly in size while maintaining the martial posture of tradition, the heraldic eagle with which the Great Seal was charged seemed to fly free of its base. Zooming forward, it flared luminously as it halted, oscillating a few arms' lengths before the Senator's confounded head. There, pulsating with hallucinatory vividness, the rampant eagle aroused swift olfactory memories of dried blood and dusty feathers, and stirred within him fragmentary images of warfare tinged with heroism and betrayal.