Petals (M.A. Reilly, Dublin) |
Let Them Not Say
- Jane Hirschfield
Jane Hirschfield wrote this poem well before the presidential inauguration and without the event in mind. “But,” she writes, “it seems a day worth remembering the fate of our shared planet and all its beings, human and beyond.”
Let them not say: we did not see it.
We saw.
We saw.
Let them not say: we did not hear it.
We heard.
We heard.
Let them not say: they did not taste it.
We ate, we trembled.
We ate, we trembled.
Let them not say: it was not spoken, not written.
We spoke,
we witnessed with voices and hands.
We spoke,
we witnessed with voices and hands.
Let them not say: they did nothing.
We did not-enough.
We did not-enough.
Let them say, as they must say something:
A kerosene beauty.
It burned.
It burned.
Let them say we warmed ourselves by it,
read by its light, praised,
and it burned.
read by its light, praised,
and it burned.
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