Wednesday
I had to post today’s essay before polls closed yesterday so I don’t know the outcome. An “after the storm” poem, however, seems appropriate regardless of which side you support given all the “permutations of Satanic sound” we have been experiencing.
Hopefully, both sides will embrace poet William Baylebridge’s final hope: if we can have “clemency anew” following one of nature’s storms, can’t we also see an end to “the rancor of the unsensing heart”?
For the good of the country, pray that this proves to be the case.
After the Storm
The storm is done--the lightning with its lust
To rend the unhallowed dome in ruin dire;
The purple heaps, from the rank chaos thrust
On sheets of fell and inauspicious fire;
The thunder bellowing loud on every bound;
The hissing bolt, so tossed as to complete
All permutations of Satanic sound;
The flood that opened heaven and ransomed it.
Benign now is that beatific blue.
The flame that fires the hill is now remote
From aught in evil. Clemency anew
--Crowns every leaf, and sings in every throat.
Shall, then, the rage of earth and heaven depart,
And not the rancor of the unsensing heart?