We're better than this, are we?

In the fields behind the house, purple love grass is ripening. Soon the seed heads will be getting blown across the fields, scattering seeds in early autumn. As of today, the election is 90 days away. We will be choosing not only a POTUS, but we will be making an informed statement about who we are as a people and to what we aspire. No longer will some of us be able to hide behind a nice-sounding but empty "we're better than this." On one hand, we can work to return to the kind of country that opens its arms and extends them to those who come here seeking a life better than they can achieve in their country of origin. The kind of country that once stood behind, and stood for, the description in today's edition of The Writer's Almanac:

Today in 1884, the cornerstone of the Statue of Liberty's pedestal was laid. One year prior, a fundraiser for the pedestal's construction solicited art and literary works for auction; 34-year-old Emma Lazarus donated a poem for the occasion, which she titled "The New Colossus."

Devoted to the plight of Jewish immigrants, Lazarus imagined that the statue would become a symbol of hope for all Ellis Island arrivals. She wrote her verse three years before the statue was completed, and only four years before her own death. The poem was essentially forgotten for 20 years, after which Lazarus' friends lobbied to have it emblazoned on a bronze plaque and hung in the museum inside the pedestal.

"The New Colossus"

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

In the alternative (on the other hand), we can continue as we have for the past three and three-quarter years. In that case, I suggest we disassemble the Statue of Liberty, remove the bronze plaque from the pedestal, and replace that plaque with one carrying a more appropriate poem by Yeats.

purple love grass ripening in August's sun

Photo by J. Harrington

The Second Coming

By William Butler Yeats

Turning and turning in the widening gyre   

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere   

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst   

Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;

Surely the Second Coming is at hand.   

The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out   

When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi

Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert   

A shape with lion body and the head of a man,   

A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,   

Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it   

Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.   

The darkness drops again; but now I know   

That twenty centuries of stony sleep

Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,   

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,   

Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born? 

As the old saying goes, the choice is ours (in ninety days or less). It remains to be seen if enough of us really are "better than this" and choose to be lead by someone who aspires to be more than a "rough beast, its hour come round at last,..."

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