Monday
Donald Trump’s promise to “drain the swamp” while wallowing in swampish corruption himself pretty much sums up his major political tactic: whatever you are guilty of, accuse the other side of it. If you do this constantly enough and confidently enough, maybe you can at least confuse enough people to get away with it.
Given that public pressure succeeded last week in forcing the resignation of one of Trump’s swampiest cabinet members (EPA head Scott Pruitt), we all deserve a good swamp poem, so here’s one by Mary Oliver. “Crossing the Swamp” describes a depressed state, making it appropriate for how many of us are feeling these days. Miraculously, however, the speaker manages to hold on to a glimmer of hope.
As you read the poem, note how it feels like wading through a swamp, with each four lines representing a step. In the process, the poet loses her bearings:
Crossing the Swamp
By Mary Oliver
Here is the endless
wet thick
cosmos, the enter
of everything—the nugget
of dense sap, branching
vines, the dark burred
faintly belching
bogs. Here
is swamp, here
is struggle,
closure–
pathless, seamless,
peerless mud. My bones
knock together at the pale
joints, trying
for foothold, fingerhold,
mindhold over
such slick crossings, deep
hipholes, hummocks
that sink silently
into the black, slack
earthsoup I feel
not wet so much as
painted and glittered
with the fat grassy
mires, the rich
and succulent marrows
of earth—a poor
dry stick given
one more chance by the whims
of swamp water—a bough
that still after all these years,
could take root,
sprout, branch out, bud–
make of its life a breathing
palace of leaves.
Many of us, wading through Trump’s swamp, feel as though we are losing “foothold, fingerhold, mindhold” with a “black, slack earthsoup” pulling us under. To be sure, Oliver’s swamp is more positive than Trump’s in that it is nourishing (“rich and succulent marrows of earth”). But in the poet’s drama, she feels like a dead stick and the swamp is a darkness that threatens to overwhelm her.
Only, miraculously, it doesn’t as, against all odds, she finds herself revitalized. If you are looking for hope, imagine that resistance to Trump is reinvigorating the American experiment. The founding fathers and mothers knew that freedom had to be fought for, and many are awaking to the fact that our liberty cannot be taken for granted.
We’re slogging through a dismal swamp. Pray that we come back and make of this country a breathing palace of leaves.
