An Ode We Owe

 

“How can I ask you to do good,

When we’ve barely withstood

Our greatest threats yet:

The depths of death, despair and disparity,

Atrocities across cities, towns & countries,

Lives lost, climactic costs.

Exhausted, angered, we are endangered,

Not because of our numbers,

But because of our numbness.

We’re strangers

To one another’s perils and pain,

Unaware that the welfare of the public

And the planet share a name–

–Equality

Doesn’t mean being the exact same,

But enacting a vast aim:

The good of the world to its highest capability.

The wise believe that our people without power

Leaves our planet without possibility.

Therefore, though poverty is a poor existence,

Complicity is a poorer excuse.

We must go the distance,

Though this battle is hard and huge,

Though this fight we did not choose,

For preserving the earth isn’t a battle too large

To win, but a blessing too large to lose.

This is the most pressing truth:

That Our people have only one planet to call home

And our planet has only one people to call its own.

We can either divide and be conquered by the few,

Or we can decide to conquer the future,

And say that today a new dawn we wrote,

Say that as long as we have humanity,

We will forever have hope.

Together, we won’t just be the generation

That tries but the generation that triumphs;

Let us see a legacy

Where tomorrow is not driven

By the human condition,

But by our human conviction.

And while hope alone can’t save us now,

With it we can brave the now,

Because our hardest change hinges

On our darkest challenges.

Thus may our crisis be our cry, our crossroad,

The oldest ode we owe each other.

We chime it, for the climate,

For our communities.

We shall respect and protect

Every part of this planet,

Hand it to every heart on this earth,

Until no one’s worth is rendered

By the race, gender, class, or identity

They were born. This morn let it be sworn

That we are one one human kin,

Grounded not just by the griefs

We bear, but by the good we begin.

To anyone out there:

I only ask that you care before it’s too late,

That you live aware and awake,

That you lead with love in hours of hate.

I challenge you to heed this call,

I dare you to shape our fate.

Above all, I dare you to do good

So that the world might be great.”

--Amanda Gorman

[Photo of Amanda Gorman reciting her poem at the United Nations General Assembly, 9/19/22]

Hymn for the Hurting

 

Everything hurts,

Our hearts shadowed and strange,

Minds made muddied and mute.

We carry tragedy, terrifying and true.

And yet none of it is new;

We knew it as home,

As horror,

As heritage.

Even our children

Cannot be children,

Cannot be.

Everything hurts.

It's a hard time to be alive,

And even harder to stay that way.

We're burdened to live out these days,

While at the same time, blessed to

outlive them.

This alarm is how we know

We must be altered--

That we must differ or die,

That we must triumph or try.

Thus while hate cannot be terminated,

It can be transformed

Into a love that lets us live.

May we not just grieve, but give:

May we not just ache, but act;

May our signed right to bear arms

Never blind our sight from shared harm;

May we choose our children over chaos.

May another innocent never be lost.

Maybe everything hurts,

Our hearts shadowed & strange.

But only when everything hurts

May everything change.

--Amanda Gorman [Written after the massacre in Uvalde, Texas in May 2022]

The Hill We Climb

When day comes we ask ourselves, where can we find light in this never-ending shade? The loss we carry, a sea we must wade. We’ve braved the belly of the beast, we’ve learned that quiet isn’t always peace and the norms and notions of what just is, isn’t always justice. And yet the dawn is ours before we knew it, somehow we do it, somehow we’ve weathered and witnessed a nation that isn’t broken but simply unfinished.

We, the successors of a country and a time where a skinny black girl descended from slaves and raised by a single mother can dream of becoming president only to find herself reciting for one. And, yes, we are far from polished, far from pristine, but that doesn’t mean we are striving to form a union that is perfect, we are striving to forge a union with purpose, to compose a country committed to all cultures, colors, characters and conditions of man.

So we lift our gazes not to what stands between us, but what stands before us. We close the divide because we know to put our future first, we must first put our differences aside. We lay down our arms so we can reach out our arms to one another, we seek harm to none and harmony for all.

Let the globe, if nothing else, say this is true: that even as we grieved, we grew, even as we hurt, we hoped, that even as we tired, we tried, that we’ll forever be tied together victorious, not because we will never again know defeat but because we will never again sow division.

Scripture tells us to envision that everyone shall sit under their own vine and fig tree and no one should make them afraid. If we’re to live up to our own time, then victory won’t lie in the blade, but in in all of the bridges we’ve made.

That is the promise to glade, the hill we climb if only we dare it because being American is more than a pride we inherit, it’s the past we step into and how we repair it. We’ve seen a force that would shatter our nation rather than share it. That would destroy our country if it meant delaying democracy, and this effort very nearly succeeded. But while democracy can periodically be delayed, but it can never be permanently defeated.

In this truth, in this faith, we trust, for while we have our eyes on the future, history has its eyes on us, this is the era of just redemption we feared in its inception we did not feel prepared to be the heirs of such a terrifying hour but within it we found the power to author a new chapter, to offer hope and laughter to ourselves, so while once we asked how can we possibly prevail over catastrophe, now we assert how could catastrophe possibly prevail over us.

We will not march back to what was but move to what shall be, a country that is bruised but whole, benevolent but bold, fierce and free, we will not be turned around or interrupted by intimidation because we know our inaction and inertia will be the inheritance of the next generation, our blunders become their burden. But one thing is certain: if we merge mercy with might and might with right, then love becomes our legacy and change our children’s birthright.

So let us leave behind a country better than the one we were left, with every breath from my bronze, pounded chest, we will raise this wounded world into a wondrous one, we will rise from the golden hills of the West, we will rise from the windswept Northeast where our forefathers first realized revolution, we will rise from the lake-rimmed cities of the Midwestern states, we will rise from the sunbaked South, we will rebuild, reconcile, and recover in every known nook of our nation in every corner called our country our people diverse and beautiful will emerge battered and beautiful, when the day comes we step out of the shade aflame and unafraid, the new dawn blooms as we free it, for there is always light if only we’re brave enough to see it, if only we’re brave enough to be it.

—Amanda Gorman