To be trapped in an era, this era,
is the poet’s nightmare and delight. O future
readers—if there will be readers—what will you make
of this? What shall I—what shall we—bequeath you?
The true traitor lacks not morals but moral imagination. I shall
no longer grant the premise that we must debate amidst the
rubble of a world the unimaginative have plundered—
A friend texted to say it’s irresponsible to protest during a pandemic. All those people
crowded together become vectors for the virus, which doesn’t care about race. I hadn’t
thought of Covid-19 as post-racial, the enlightened bug.
I so want to be optimistic and airy, to write of
our generous spirit, to wax poetic about moon landings
and beach landings, entrepreneurship, sliced bread,
the assembly line, the World Wide Web. It feels un-American
I hope it’s not too late to stop the carnage.
America forgives itself so easily, as
though we weren’t forgiving but forgetting.
Just as with hurricanes, poverty, terrorism, and all those other “isms” that bedevil mankind, the answer to COVID-19 is to increase military spending and cut taxes.
Trump now thinks he is a king, acts like a king, and is deferred to by the Republican Party as though he were a king
Celebrating the birthday of a nonprofit you founded doesn’t have the same nostalgia-soaked feeling as your own birthday: rather than the bittersweet recollections of childhood, this celebration has the bracing feel of adulthood.
I confess to undemocratic meditations:
If Bin Laden had sought instead
to save the world,
what would he have hijacked?
I’m not going to argue the absurd, argue
That things are bad or going to get better.
We live in an age of immutable belief shaped