LISTENING TO ELECTION RHETORIC FROM SOUTH CAROLINA THIS MORNING, I went looking for a poem I had written a long time ago… I found it, less poem than prose, and what I had written was done in that time when I was talking to myself… eight stanzas of six lines each… the first stanza was Jerral number 0ne and the alternate stanzas were Jerral number two.  It was meant to be a conversation.  One of the joys of old age comes from looking back at things said or written a long time ago and wondering what was happening in the world or on the job that made the thoughts happen.  Today’s BLOG writing was done on Tuesday, February 27, 1900.

Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori

makes sense only if it can be established

that the country is a secure haven

for all people of every possible description

which makes it difficult to imagine

what kind of person could be a South African patriot.

Before smugness is carried too far here

perhaps it should be recalled

that not many years ago

it was impossible for a Black person

to ride anywhere in the bus but the back

in most places in America.

The country is more than actually what happens.

Looking behind what actually is

to what the vision is  

upon which the nation is founded

provides the motivation for patriotism

and America’s essential vision is honorable.

Explain that honor to a poor Black woman

living with five children in Abject Poverty, U.S.A.,

and see how much of the vision of America she enjoys.

Or check with the next gay citizen who has decided to live openly 

trying to keep sane and secure while competing

with others for advancement in any business but hairdressing.

But even for those deprived and abused citizens in America

the basic foundation of democracy promises

what it intends but cannot yet deliver

and won’t be able to provide

until enough good citizens know that it is the threat

from inside the country that must be met with determination.

It is then the mythical not the actual country 

the citizen must defend who accepts as truth

Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.

The sentiment sells easier to members

of organizations like the John Birch Society

or maybe even to the right wing of the Republican party.

Is there ever any condition so pure

that it can be defended for its present value

rather than for the hope it offers as an ideal

or an idea, whichever fits this page and thought better?

Without American democracy as a model

the world might sink to a lower level of dishonor.

Even democracy should be fine tuned constantly

to ensure that the keepers of the standards and laws

don’t use them for only a select group.

Even if that group is the large majority of citizens.

Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.

Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.