Archive
01/06/09 - (2)
The Chicago Fire
For his first twenty-one years, nothing much happened. But, as if at the moment he turned twenty-two, He broke open the barn door, bolted, Like the lightning zigzagging from Mrs. O'Leary's lantern, And began illuminating the Windy City, Running helter-skelter, for his life, Running single-mindedly, running hellbent for election.
And before he knew it, He was organizing urban-ghetto neighborhoods, Doing what he could to teach underprivileged kids The meaning of honesty, dignity, purposive life-goals, Pulling themselves up by their hopes' bootstraps, Making realities out of their impoverished spirits' dreams, Aspiring to be state reps, senators, commanders in chief.
It went, without saying, that he was an exceptional scholar, Becaming president of the Harvard Law Review, Who would go on to write two engaging books About how fate had prepared him to take the world stage, By assuming the highest office in the land, Which he did, at forty-seven, Possessing a remarkable Lincolnian likeness,
A gift for eloquence, unflappable presence and prescience, An ability to turn Illinois-prairie stump speeches Into Gettysburg Addresses, Whose glorious tropes would never cease echoing, No matter that a Ford's Theatre would welcome him, Bring, to premature climax, his rise to immortality — America's latter-day Great Emancipator.
These gloomy, demoralizing times, after his funeral, Poets compose heroic couplets, elegies, odes, Myriad "O Captain! My Captain!"s, Variations on "When Lilacs Last in the Door-yard Bloom'd," Hoping to pay tribute worthy of his short-lived aura — That fire which borrowed its light from Mrs. O'Leary's lantern And will burn, for the world, as an eternal flame.
01/06/09 - (2)
|
|||
|
|||
