by Jan Gross
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| 2020 Hindsight by Rob Rogers at The Nib. |
Buyers beware!
We could lose our bid on the sale
Citizens no more, but customers
Truth no longer told, but sold
Off to the inside traitors
Bought out by big business
Walled in by Wall Street
Gutted by greed
Dealt out of the deal
His bottom line rules mighty
Regulations, taxes damned
Hail to the profit margin!
Protect the family brand!
Fake the facts!
Hype the hoax!
Let hackers and trolls
Surf coast to coast
Masses trumpet triumph
Chanting hate inspires
Winners one and none
Where QAnon conspires
Monuments stage his glory
A country’s reality show
A bible brandished on high
God’s Truth trampled below
Heroes stripped of honor
Fawners scale the ranks
On all sides fine people
Hateful words just pranks
Covid breathes calamity
Choked by one man’s vanity
Old age best begone!
Make way for the strong!
Refuse to don your face masks
Cures are easily taken
His own comeback is clear proof
Of experts long mistaken
He’s fair as honest Abe was
Not a racist bone in sight
With insults heaped on icons
He helps boost his loser’s plight
Dissenters face dismissal
Detractors face defeat
The bar of justice lowers
Tips the balance for deceit
Clear the way for order!
Twist the arm of law!
Protests pave the future
Marchers won’t withdraw
Black and white, or red and blue
Dividing lines he always drew
Will this storm bring rainbows
With hope to start anew?
Battle lines are hardened
The bitter end draws near
Time to line up
Time to fill in
Ballots to mail or not
Votes to cast once or twice
Votes to buy
To buy us time
Time to keep us
Here long enough
To see
… to see the turning of the tide
… for the tide has got to turn.
Author’s Note: This poem echoes James Baldwin’s plea to settle for what a vote can get you… maybe not a job, or a loan, or a major reform, but “it may keep [us] here long enough … to see, and use, the turning of the tide—for the tide has got to turn.” (Written prior to the 1980 presidential election in “Notes on the House of Bondage” and quoted in Eddie S. Glaude Jr.’s Begin Again: James Baldwin’s America and Its Urgent Lessons for Our Own.)
Jan Gross is waiting for the tide to turn. She is Professor emerita at Grinnell College, and is co-authoring a collaborative poetic memoir about interracial friendship, Black & White and In-Between.