For the 20th of January 1961 and 2021 - poem

 

For the 20^th of January

1961 and 2021

 

The deed of gift was many deeds of war

 

-Robert Frost

 

Miz Hawkins brought a television to school

So we could watch the inauguration

Of a president “born in this century”

But he seemed really old to us anyway

 

God looked like President Eisenhower

And God was surely a Methodist

President Kennedy was a Cath’lic

(In their basements they hid shortwaves and guns)

 

Shortwaves tuned to the Vatican and that ol’ Pope

So could a Cath’lic be a good American?

But the nation was young, and so were we

And America was God’s best creation

 

And because America was the Leader of the World

And we had whipped the Nazis and the Japs [sic]

All by ourselves, and invented the Bomb

We were the blessing of democracy over all

 

Robert Frost spoke grand words in the January frost

I was hoping for his “Stopping by Woods”

Because I had memorized that in school

But he gave us something else, “The Gift Outright”

 

And then with frosted breath the President

Asked us what we could do for our country

Our country later asked us about Viet-Nam

But for now Miz Hawkins shushed all us deeds of gift

 

The nation was young that day, and so were we –

 

And everything seems so much older now

Our long ago optimism a deed of gift

To angry old men whose voices rattle

 

Rattle from behind armored glass and barbed wire

Barbed wire left over from DaNang and Saigon

And a hundred abandoned desert posts

Each a gift outright to Ozymandias

 

Who late bestrode the littered Capitol steps

His wrinkled lips loud-yelping in command

Over our increasingly antique land

“Made it, Ma! Top of the World!”

 

The happy crowds of ’61 are sand

There are no crowds in ’21, only silence

Behind ranks of soldiers (properly vetted)

Standing in empty streets, waiting for a Traveller

 

References:

 

Robert Frost, “The Gift Outright”

Shelley, “Ozymandias”

Warner Brothers, White Heat (film), 1949