Poetry Corner--of Death!

A new poem for Barack Obama's inau--sorry--Inauguration. This from the Welsh "National Poet," Gillian Clarke. The BBC quotes it in full:

NEW YEAR, 2009

Venus in the arc of the young moon

is a boat the arms of a bay,

the sky clear to infinity

but for the trailing gossamer

of a transatlantic plane.

The old year and the old era dead,

pushed burning out to sea

bearing the bones of heroes, tyrants,

ideologues, thieves and deceivers

in a smoke of burning money.


The dream is over. Glaciers will melt.

Seas will rise to swallow golden islands.

Somewhere a volcano may whelm a city,

earth shake its skin like an old horse,

a hurricane topple a town to rubble.

Yet tonight, under the cold beauty

of the moon and Venus, something like hope begins,

as if times can turn, the world change course,

as if truth can speak, good men come to power,

and words have meaning again.

Maybe black-hearted boys in love with death

won't blow themselves and us to smithereens.

Maybe guns will fall silent, the powerful

cease slaughtering the weak, the rich

will not gorge as the poor starve.


Hope spoke the word 'Yes', the word 'we', the word 'can',

and a thousand British teenagers at Poetry Live

rose to their feet in a single yell of joy -

black, white, Christian, Muslim, Jew,

faithful and faithless. We are all in this together.

Ie. gallwn ni. (Yes, we can)

God. Not exactly Milton. [Update: or even Milhouse.] Anyway, Clarke notes the reaction after she read the poem to "2000 schoolchildren in Birmingham":

"Immediately all the children stood up cheering and hugging each other and I was astounded.

"If 15-year-old kids get excited about Barack Obama winning the election, then it gives me this great feeling of hope, a hope that we can all share in.

So hard to get teenagers excited.

"It is not just that we believe he's a good man or an eloquent man, but that we somehow need him to be a man who appreciates language and truth, and will make all the lies of the last eight years disappear.

"We're on his side and we'll try to make it work.

"We're all black now. And it's taught us all - from schoolchildren in Birmingham to poets in Wales - that if you're black, you can do it; if you're a woman, you can do it; if you're young, you can do it. And if you're Welsh, we can do it."

I'm with the people last month who were wishing we could move the inauguration up, if only because it would be over by now.

Update: JWP adds in comments: "Oh, I did have time to notice they left off the last line. The ending should read":

"Maybe black-hearted boys in love with death
won't blow themselves and us to smithereens.
Maybe guns will fall silent, the powerful
cease slaughtering the weak, the rich
will not gorge as the poor starve.

And maybe monkeys will fly out my butt."