A Poem for Sunday: An Elegy on Donald Trump’s Innauguration:

Woman cryingDonald Trump was asked whether he had any heroes.  He said no. He then went on to talk about his father and himself. Reading that I was inspired to compose this elegy for him done with apologies to Sir Walter Scott.

The use of the term elegy is as a “serious meditative poem.” Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote: “Elegy is a form of poetry natural to the reflective mind. It may treat of any subject, but it must treat of no subject for itself; but always and exclusively with reference to the poet. As he will feel regret for the past or desire for the future, so sorrow and love became the principal themes of the elegy. Elegy presents every thing as lost and gone or absent and future.”

An Elegy Upon the Inauguration of Donald Trump

Breathes there the man, with soul so dead,

Who never to himself hath said,

“There’s my hero and guiding light.” .

Whose heart hath ne’er within him burn’d,

As to this one his thoughts had turn’d,

When walking through the darkest night.

If such there breathe, go, mark him well;

For him no Minstrel raptures swell;

High though his titles, proud his name,

Boundless his wealth as wish can claim;

Despite those titles, power, and pelf,

The wretch, concentred all in self,

Living, shall forfeit fair renown,

And, doubly dying, shall go down

To the vile dust, from whence he sprung,

Unwept, unhonour’d, and unsung.

 

25 Comments

  1. One thing worse than living in a police state is finding out that no one cares.

  2. John: You guys love name calling. Why can’t I play? I think I might be good at it.

  3. John King McDonald

    Cool it. The both of you. Khalid … you throw the ” Crackers ” in the racist. stew on a fairly frequent basis. Turnabout is fair play. But nobody here calls anyone a …. nigger. Nor should they. But there is a perpetual double standard that we Irish in particular who were called by the Wasp ascendancy … The Niggers Of Boston … have no patience for. No Irish Need Apply … is not a historical fiction. It was a fact ; full of lamentable consequences . So, We get your anger. Welcome to the Club old pal. There’s plenty of anger to go around. The pity would be if a lively blog , with wits galore , degenerates into a newspaper message board replete with empty insults from people , in this case, who know better.

  4. Do you have at least an eighth grade reading level? Even in English, some of the insults are quite complex and involved. Let me know where you’re at academically speaking. Perhaps, we can begin right away.

  5. Its called “Hijja.”

  6. Norwood: There’s a whole genre of Arabic poetry devoted solely to insult. I’d be happy to translate some for you.

  7. Bark, bark.

  8. Matt: You omitted transposing the third line in Scott. That line applies to Trump.

    “Breathes there the man, with soul so dead,
    Who never to himself hath said,
    This is my own, my native land!”

    If not America First, then what first?

    • Henry: You mean America First, except for the Jews, and, the Jigs, and, Johnny Garcia? Screw that passive-aggressive false patriot racist bullshit. Man, your shit stinks.

    • Henry:

      America First has always been used by people who really end up meaning “me and people like me first.” I happen to believe we cannot become an island in the world. America will only succeed if it works to make sure others in the world succeed. I don’t suppose there would be peace in Ireland if we had that attitude and did not stick our nose into the Troubles.

  9. Everything depends on Comey. Which way is he going to jump?

  10. John King McDonald

    Khalid, An unusually thoughtful response. Neither can I .

  11. John: Glorious Leader, for all to see, put his dick in the dirt, then, tripped over it. I can hardly wait for his next TV appearance. Better than laughing at Nixon. Who’d have thought it. Tricky Dick was a hard act to follow.

  12. FIC was a great flick . WHAT MAKES SAMMY RUN by Bud Schulberg was a novel I read as a teen. Schulberg’s ability to break literary conventions and just … bring it … in that novel is evocative of Trump’s style. FACE IN THE CROWD of course is based on a Schulberg novel. Its airing yesterday is a transparent Inauguration Day protest stunt by TMC.
    The ” MEDIA” has the daggers out for Trump. The ineffectual Dem poverty pimps who cynically manipulate their largely disenfranchised constituency while they lead their Beautiful People lives are up to their usual cynical and very cheap tricks.
    OH LOOK AMERICA ! YOU CATTLE. !
    Let us demonstrate our Democratic Class as a departing Administration by placing starkly WHITE. tarpaulins over the Washington Mall grass. Get it you dopes? Look at all them WHITE. SUPREMACIST’S . That WHITE TABLEAU on which the electoral hopes and votes of SIXTY MILLION. stands is our Nuremberg Rally staging . The real Fascists are the Democratic elite and their Press minions who fully understand the architectonics of mass hypnosis, crowd manipulation, and the Art of psychological seduction in carefully staged, cynically staged, and staged in the protection of their own selfish interests … Tableaux! … DISGUSTING!

  13. It would ring truer if named On Those Officials Who Failed To Attend The Inaugural. It bears no discernible resemblance to the man sworn in. Let us all stand with pride, with confidence, with joy, Cara Al Sol.

  14. What about the flip side of the coin? If the Clintons had got the majority of electoral votes and Trump got 3 million more votes the Clinton reaction would have been what? How many elections outside of the United States have influenced by our government? I am a native born American and I still have not read an answer as to why given the fact 15 of the 19 hijackers on 9/11 were from Saudi Arabia , how are they still living?

  15. CIA visit:

    It was on a Saturday. Glorious Leader had to ship in his own crowd. There weren’t enough janitors on the premises for a posse. Who do you think was doing all that clapping?

  16. Excellent! Wa-llahi! That’s Glorious Leader to a tee. He’s starting to do the Andy Griffith imitation. “Face in the Crowd” was on TMC, yesterday. I hope life imitates art.

  17. Scott’s poem is about a man without a country. It’s use seems to be misplaced, No one would claim that a president with an America First policy is a man without a country. He is not an internationalist or globalist. Multi national organizations i.e. NATO, U N, IMF and World Bank are not going to be determining things. He is a man with a country. 2. President Trump received a very warm welcome from the CIA employees as he did at the Army-Navy game. Other than the political hacks at the top of the National Security organizations the rank and file appear to be enthused about the new Administration.

  18. John King McDonald

    Beginning to seem like an Oedipal issue. And there is nothing wrong with that. It is worth examining. His preoccupation with his Father as Hero is something that you focus on as a character deficit. You paraphrase an elegiac put down of the guy, yet you wrote a fantasy piece on visiting him in Trump Tower. You were awed by him to the extent of bringing your Grandson. You also grounded that piece with an actual photograph of what appeared to be a Grandfather with his Grandson standing with Security at the Trump Tower lobby doors. There is a curious admixture of Hero worship and hate here displayed. There are plenty of ” Pelf”-centered …..” millionaires and billionaires “…to use the hypocritical Democratic pep rally slam … to gp around. You are a bright guy. I admire your writing. Yet. when the tone is this vitriolic it removes the discussion from the sphere of the intellectual and rational. It places it rather in the realm of the emotional, psychogenic, and intemperate.