This Is Another Country

This is another country from the one
we lived in yesterday. Here, with a gun

held to our temples; with the threat of rape
and graft and grift; with mobs of men who ape

the posture their imposter ruler chins
and sneers across the stage to make his sins

look holier than ours; and with our Posts
and Times pretending to be friendly hosts

to sane appraisals and unaltered facts:
we cross the line to lands where bestial acts

and purchased truths and porn-queen beauties feud
with one another to be ranked most lewd.

We had a Lincoln and a Washington —
but in another country from this one.


Notes:
Since I wrote this today, around noon, and am posting it mid-afternoon, it remains within the realm of possibility that it will change in minor ways before I consider it finished.

An unfortunate thing about political verse, besides the fact that it rarely speaks as well as a non-political verse does, is that the versifier feels the need to put it out in the world promptly.

Today, it is of the moment. Tomorrow, it may seem to be of a moment passed.

A train hardly cares if you make it to the platform in time to catch it. It irks you, though, to miss it. Even should you lose your hat and put on mis-matching socks in the effort, it matters to you.

Cheers . . .

Imagine Yourself

Imagine yourself buried in the grass
and leaves — piled high on some wet winter day
by unseen hands that had an hour to pass

in mischief, with no set rules to obey —
for who would mind that they should rake to grace
gray, sodden ground with mounded art, to slay

an idle hour? So chill against your face,
and damp and clingy, fall the grasses, leaves,
dark twigs, and scraped-up roots. The only trace

left of you is the sense that this year grieves
for years long past, of ice and snow. But say
that now a lively, laughing wind retrieves

your hidden self to view! Thus life will play!
And somehow you rejoice in this gray day.


A note . . .

I wrote this sonnet on the 29th of December. The day was warmer than it is today, which is the first of the new year; the ground, wet; and the sky, as the sonnet says, gray.

Today, though colder, with random snowflakes being breeze-blown here and there . . . is gray again.

When I wrote the poem I thought it might do, as a New Year's expression. It still seems to suit the occasion. This may not turn out the happiest year, at least for us in United States. Yet in the gray ambiguity of our times we may yet find joy.

Cheers . . .