Inauguration Day 2005
I went looking for Lowell's
"Inauguration Day, 1953" with
its I'd-die-to-have-written final line
"The Republic summons Ike, the mausoleum in her heart,"
which I probably misquoted anyway,
but the damn thing's not on any online repository,
and even if you think the poem's a suppository
it's the perfect day to print it out
contemplate the horror, the hoo-hah,
that today Ike looks like Socrates
when he's stood up against...whatever it is.
My girlfriend's fond of saying, at the end
of a day she'd rather not have had,
"Can I go home now?"
And--ritually--I remind her she IS at home,
to which she replies
"Oh...yeah...shit."
Can I go home now?
Ken/Inauguration Thursday 2005
(Shine, perishing Republic)
--
Kenneth Wolman
Proposal Development Department
Room SW334
Sarnoff Corporation
609-734-2538
|