Our Better Angels
Discover more from Poets Reading the News
Despite the widely-reported fear, there was no violent insurrection at the state capitols today. The Inauguration passed as planned, peacefully. And it turns out that U.S. voters' voices are heard at the polls. Voters overwhelmingly chose Joe Biden over Donald Trump, and the election wasn't stolen. And it turns out that the violent mob of white supremacists who raided the U.S. Capitol were widely rebuked with legal challenges, and Donald Trump received a second impeachment for his role in inciting the insurrection. And it turns out even a leader with a disregard for the truth, the rule of law, and the sanctity of the election still lost. And it turns out he moved out of the White House. And it turns out there is still a United States of America. And the sense of relief I feel is complicated, because while these outcomes are overwhelmingly good, there are many disturbing fissures that have been revealed throughout this referendum on democracy.
But maybe our better angels have prevailed. Like Abraham Lincoln said, "We are not enemies, but friends. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory will swell when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature." Today, the Inaugural poet Amanda Gorman said, "As we have our eyes on the future, history has its eyes on us." And so we must act.
Below, we have freshly published Inauguration-related work by henry 7. reneau, jr., Gary Margolis, Leonore Hildebrandt, and Susana Praver-Pérez. Looking globally, we have fresh work by Sophie Segura (reacting to the historic pro-choice ruling in Argentina) and Mary Ellen Talley (reacting to the abuses by former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick).
Take care now,
J Spagnolo
P.S. In case you didn't see our last email, we are hosting an Inauguration poetry reading this Saturday. I hope you can join us.
Inauguration Day
By Gary Margolis
Isn’t today a good day to read
Frost’s “West-Running Brook”
again? To think of marriage
as the maple and pine braiding
themselves together over time.
In his poem’s case, a husband
and wife arguing, as to which way
the brook flows, east or west,
north or south. And who makes
the better argument, before
going to bed. Shutting off
the bedside light. Before saying
goodnight without having to
claim a permanent winner.
Something, to hold against
each other. Water being
what it is and how the stones
are lying. Whether
it’s been bone dry or wet
enough for flooding.
Whether we still have a country.
Which I’d like to say to Frost
(who liked to say he wasn’t reading
his poems to an audience, just
saying them) Robert, today
could be the day we braided
our states together again.
Our states of being.
As you had your poem’s husband
say to end the burbling fighting
with his wife (although when you
read the poem out loud, it sounds
like they were talking and not raising
their voices too much).
Has him say,
“This is the day of what we both said”.
Which seems like a good line
for our new president-elect to end
his speech on. On Inauguration Day.
At the podium. One hand raised.
One on his family’s bible.
With few of us around on the Mall,
standing masked-up, outside the ropes.
Knowing what we know about the care
we have to take. Until the day comes
again, we can stand outside arguing,
my love, if that branching braid is more
pine than maple.
Nolite Te Bastardes Carborundorum
By henry 7. reneau, jr.
I tried to drown my sorrows
but the bastards learned how to swim
—Frida Kahlo
I remember the media-parroted propaganda/: crowds of Muslims
cheering the fall of New York’s Twin Towers.
Allahu Akbar!! /on JFK Blvd? The “thousands”
of Muslims/ happy according to Trump/ who soundbyte feigned
pissed enough to boldface lie. I can remember the proselytized chants
of the uninformed/ cheering (USA! USA! USA!) /in the aftermath
of the sanctioned murder of bin Laden. I can remember
the YouTube videos /of high noon /gun-
shot splayed thugs/demons/&criminals mourned like white school children.
The cellphones looky-lewd for all to see/ a now everyday Black
Lives Matter/ of fact/: the gasping fish gills /drowning out loud in
[di]visible Laws of racist profiles. The guv’ment serpent’s
tongue of official/ & spokesperson/ who define the gray areas
/as anomalies or aberrations/ the excuses of other than / of being
taken out of context/ presidential texted in the idiot-grams of
140 characters or less/: I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue
& shoot somebody & I wouldn’t lose voters. A bigoted system.
Perhaps the truth is They fear/ that is turning me to
a bridge jumper in precarious times. Think /erosion/: glass
turned to sand /to dust so fine /you realize too late/ it’s choking
you. I remember a clown posing as president /talking
like he really knew /what he was talking about/ &
the sycophants cheering.
Orange
By Susana Praver-Pérez
I once loved orange, the color
of my mother’s mohair sweater
and my father’s flannel shirt.
Snuggled between them, scent
of wool and autumn leaves,
we wandered Berkshire days.
I once loved the fiery orange sun that sunk
on a pink feather bed over Long Island Sound,
seagulls gliding above.
I once loved sweet chinas, juice dripping orange
down my wrists as I peeled their thick skin
in the back seat of a rickety Jeep, engine straining
as we climbed Puerto Rico’s cordillera into the clouds
fertile orange earth
peeking between green.
Orange was once sacred–
like the robes of Buddhist monks,
like a pinch of saffron in Persian stews,
like achiote, coloring a caldero of arroz
steaming on the stove
while Danny Rivera croons
on the radio.
You have taken orange and turned it into an atrocity.
Your version of orange is
a flashing neon sign in Vegas
where you gambled
with our lives
sporting an overdone tan
of the idle rich.
I’ve long been wary of ruddy faced men,
imagined the red of their cheeks not fine arteries
beneath pale skin, but a mirror
reflecting blood
shed by their hands
or by their ancestors
who hand down their loot.
You moved Monopoly pieces on a tilted board,
amassed hotels
while swelling numbers of people sleep
in the street
and others break their backs and their children’s
piggy banks
to pay Bank of America.
You damaged decency,
poured gasoline on simmering bigotry
and lit it
with an orange match.
Keep your damn orange –
the orange stink of a polluted pond,
eco-friendly laws tossed
in your dumpster,
the orange air when the sun couldn’t shine
through fire ash,
the orange rust that accumulates on a heart
whose owner has forgotten
how to use it.
I take back my orange –
apricot and peach
hanging heavy on leafy limbs,
the cantaloupe walls
of my kitchen,
the soft orange glow of dawn.
I Cannot Live Without You
By Leonore Hildebrandt
Dear Country, today is good—
a bright and breezy morning that awakens every cell of your body.
The birds and trees and meadows and clouds balance with the earth’s movement.
The people who have taken you for granted pause for a moment
and regard you. As always, you are generous, welcoming them back.
My dear Country, today you celebrate.
The past has left you wounded.
You have come face to face with your fragility—
the house of democracy broken into and vandalized,
servants of the constitution brazen, betraying the people.
You have come through the tumult in the streets,
the howling of sirens, hate-words, confederate flags.
You have been cloistered, lonely, and sick.
You mourn the losses.
And so today your vision of greatness returns to its roots—humility—
you note that you are one of many who are gathered at the table.
While you have not achieved all you set out to do,
you had the audacity to dream of equality and justice.
You are built on the wish for “a more perfect Union.”
My dear Country, you are beautiful—resilient.
Already the hills swept by last year’s fires are greening.
As public spaces reopen, the life of communities will rebound.
We will send our children to school, mingle in the city’s streets,
gather at potlucks, coffee shops, and corner stores.
We will kiss our grandkids, offer a hand, a heart,
the compassionate touch we’ve been craving.
We will agree on what the numbers tell us.
Dear Country, I cannot live without you.
In fact, I need you more.
And I no longer feel helpless when I reach out to you.
As we look at one another with fresh eyes, may I be honest?
I’m still disappointed that you would allow a man into the White House
who cares about himself above all.
I’m still tense when I think of the gamers and breakers of things,
their threats both open-carry and concealed.
But I long for you to heal, dear Country.
You deserve applause, street-dancers, a rainbow, a bouquet of roses!
You deserve decency and know-how.
Today I see the linking of arms—
an elastic chain to guard the transfer of power.
I see you waving to your global neighbors, rejoining their efforts
to keep the earth livable, to stand up to demagogues.
Because the eagle which you so proudly display in your emblems
cannot live by itself. It needs mountains and valleys
and plains where other creatures, too, may thrive.
It needs a spring, a weeping cloud, a stream.
It needs a tree to rest on, the air to soar into.
Today you recall the story of the thirteen Colonies
that formed a new single nation. They adopted a motto
written on the scroll clenched in the eagle’s beak:
E pluribus unum—out of many, one.
It was the Roman scholar Cicero who said it first—
the webs of family, friendship, and community
give rise to society and the state.
“When each person loves the other as much as himself,
it makes one out of many.” Dear Country,
you have restored the missing pronouns—herself, themselves—
you know that one is made of many, and one is among many,
and one depends on many.
Ancient Rome believed in natural signs as clues
when planning for the country’s future.
An augur observed the behavior of birds
to see whether the gods favored a proposed action.
So I try it myself, watch the eagle’s comeback
in the wind-swept woods by the bay.
I watch the piñon jays—noisy flocks of dry shrub-lands.
They are pecking at cones, gathering,
cashing seeds that will sprout and grow.
Birds—during migration, a shimmering river of wings
flows through the darkness of night.
The Roman augurs must have learned much
about the ambitions of small bodies.
Today’s celebration is as momentous as a migration.
Dear Country, you may be tired, and yet your workers keep showing up.
Your mothers are struggling harder than ever for the common good.
Your doctors and nurses and caretakers keep mustering strength.
The helpers at food pantries, the activists for a living earth,
the protesters for Black Lives all offer visions of kinship.
Taught by history, your people are dogged in their hope,
for this has not been the last pandemic,
the last struggle for racial equality,
the last attempt by partisans to lead you astray.
But today you are breathing the sweet air.
Inauguration—a rite of passage,
a tribute to the bond between you, my dear Country,
and the people gathered here and elsewhere under the arc of sky.
Today, when we listen to the birds, we say, “How brave they are.”
E pluribus unum—out of many, one.
Our sustenance, our learning—out of many.
Each seed a confluence of many.
Revisionist History for the Flock
By Mary Ellen Talley
Trigger Warning: Abuse
ROME (AP) — Pope Francis pledged Wednesday to rid the Catholic Church of sexual abuse and offered prayers to victims of former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, a day after the Vatican released a detailed report into the decades-long church cover-up of his sexual misconduct. 11/11/20
Not everyone wanted
Father McCarrick
to renew his vows
on the occasion
of his Jubilee year –
but the generous
Pope John Paul II
ignored warnings.
My own children
rang the bells
during Masses
at our church.
How many
white-robed birdlets
were ringing
warning bells
parents ignored?
How many falcons
dived down into goodness
inside the aviary?
The Boy Scouts
just filed for bankruptcy
to ward off costs
of some 300 lawsuits.
I’m reading this
while my grandson
is on a campout.
There are new rules
to protect fledglings.
Now my granddaughter’s
a Scout too.
My husband fared well,
was never abused.
Neither my son
nor my daughter
to my knowledge –
I’ve studied the signs.
Cassocks have always
made good camouflage.
One mother
saw McCarrick
rubbing inner thighs
of her son in the 80s
but her anonymous letter
never made it past the aviary.
Congregations singing
On Eagle’s Wings,
Be Not Afraid
Here I Am, Lord
finally flew
in the face
of the indifferent
patriarchy
poisoning
anyone’s passion
for faith, just in time
to defrock the man
who now lives
with other dethroned clergy
foregoing any “I’m sorry.”
No steel bars
blurring his vision,
the windows for viewing
wings submerged in a murky pond
near a chapel
where McCarrick
still attends services
every Sunday.
Kerchief
By Sophie Segura
Let it be a vivid colour
like the gaucho’s serenero
if not the milk white
of a newborn’s muslin.
Let it be worn about the wrist,
tied at the chin,
painted on faces
and plazas.
Let it speak to others
agitando as in the zamba’s revoleo.
Let it take courage
from a referendum
on Día de la Revolución,
the red carnations of Galatasaray.