Bearing Witness to the Times: When Hope Is Set in Stone

Some of my writer friends and I have been talking – especially the poets among us. What can we do during these uncertain times? We see before us (and among us) division and discord magnified by the nature of our political system.

The best thing that poets can do is to bear witness to the times – articulate what is happening in the moment; speak to the real life experiences of your people.  I am setting myself a goal to write a poem each week that reflects what I see and experience in the life of our nation. I may not post a poem each week, but if I can write one poem a week there will be some chronicle of our sacred/tested/doubtful union.

I hope my efforts will not be polemical, but will rather be a true expression of what is. My goal will be to speak to our experiences of what we see and feel in our community and national life. Hopefully that poetic chronicle will depict the joys, sorrows, celebrations and uncertainties that come forth in our common struggle for a more perfect union.

Today I begin by sharing a poem I wrote last Friday on inauguration day:

When Hope Is Set in Stone

(Thoughts on inauguration day)

Photo by Martin Child / Robert Harding

(Getty Images)

We put our heroes in marble

Thinking we give them honor

When in fact

We do it for ourselves.

Having learned that we can so quickly

Misplace our values

Or set aside our highest ideals,

We chisel from the stone –

Or cast in bronze –

Those images we admire.

Thomas Jefferson Memorial (Wikipedia photo)

    
        Justice and wisdom
        Come through those marble faces,

        As do fidelity and compassion –

        Because our own hands

        Carved them out

        While we were delighting

        In our better angels.

Martin Luther King Memorial
Photo by Alan Kkotok

Marble faces and bronze statues

Look out on our parades

Whether we march in hope

Or walk in fear and hatred.

If we stop to look back

Into their unchanging eyes

There is a chance

We might remember

Why we set those ideals in polished rock.

Perhaps we will recall

Those better days

When we etched our hopes in stone.

                                 ~ Charles Kinnaird

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