NOW AMERICA’S 4/11
(Barack Obama, first black US President, elected 4.11.08)
The slaves are now the kings:
A shaft of light pierced
Three hundred years of dark despair
And in one momentous day
Power passed to the dispossessed.
Words like ‘justice’ and ‘freedom’,
Long corrupted by rough usage,
Suddenly took on a newly minted edge
And people dared to believe again
They spelled out plausible ideals.
How remarkable that a democratic brew
With such dubious ingredients
As hate and ignorance and fear
Should have distilled a liquid
Infused with great humanity and hope.
How remarkable that the agent
Of this transformation,
Like another man before him,
First had to cauterize and cleanse
The stigmata of a coloured skin.
So, like Mandela, Obama sets a noble pace
For humans of every creed and race.
3 comments:
Oh! Yes Gulliby, Bill. It's a mighty topical poem and indeed sharply to the point. I am sure that Martin Luther King would also feel a great justification after all the words he too offered the hoards of unbelievers at that time.
I like the dis-chord of each stanza. The format, just like the life style of so many African-Americans, brings home the difficulties under which so many of them live in 'the richest country on earth' but I wonder how much will actually change for the majority of disenfranchised Black Americans, now that Obama has been elected?
I share your doubts, Ian, about the real changes Obama can achieve in the face of a horrendous array of seemingly intractable problems. And like you, I have seen too many new dawns prove to be false dawns. But whether or not Obama proves to be a great president, the significance of his election triumph is that he pushed open a door that had always been closed to millions of his fellow Americans - and it cannot be closed again. In short, he has shifted US history on to a higher plane. Bill
Great to see another Poet blogger! Wondered where this one came from when I first visited Ex Stanza, then read comments and found it to be you, Bill. So good to have those historical times represented by verse.
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