Disappeared one of the great winds of our generation howling in the wilderness? I got ya covered:
Inauguration
Posted on December 13, 2008 by johninca
I hear you’re to be our Commander In Chief,
Some heard it with joy but I heard it with grief,
Are the legislators you hold in tow
A congress or Reichstag? I no longer know.
Not for myself do I sound an alarm,
I won’t resist you; I’ll do you no harm,
My forgiveness I withheld not from you,
For what you’ve done and for what’s to ensue.
Conscience demands that for you I should pray,
A command I complied with on this very day,
Advanced was the night ‘ere I finally lay down,
As if sleep were an unattainable noun.
I saw a woman in effigy hang,
All while your minions celebrated and sang,
I thought they’d drink a toast to your health,
In glasses they’d bought with redistributed wealth.
I saw a woman’s head in a noose,
I saw the forces of evil let loose,
The woman whose head was in effigy rent,
She should have been our Vice President.
I saw your gendarmes patrolling the street,
I saw my country her conqueror greet,
I saw the young men marched off to war,
And saw women weep for the children they bore.
I saw my country when she was seized,
By soldiers who with themselves appeared pleased,
My country I saw them drag to a hill,
On her about to do their own will.
My country I saw on two wooden blocks nailed,
Crosswise arranged, and I saw her impaled,
I saw your gendarmes guarding the hill,
And crowds the vicinity starting to fill.
I saw my country struggle for breath,
Unable to move, now resigned to her death,
I heard her writhing, and heard a last gasp,
I knew that life had slipped from her grasp.
I heard babies cry and I heard women scream,
As if concluding a horrible dream,
I had seen blood and I had seen tears,
And reckoned my sorrows beyond all my years.
Then the Poet, from his little place on the hill,
As if overcoming weakness of will,
Kept vigil till morning; then home he returned,
His country’s sorrowful fate having learned.
His room having entered, he collapsed to the ground,
For all he had seen his exhaustion was sound,
With heaven he wrestled, entreated and pled,
His country to see lifted up from the dead.
Howling and prowling.
