Robert Pinsky
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The Anniversary
We adore images, we like the spectacle
Of speed and size, the working of prodigious
Systems. So on television we watched
The terrible spectacle, repetitiously gazing
Until we were sick not only of the sight
Of our prodigious systems turned against us
But of the very systems of our watching.
The date became a word, an anniversary
We inscribed with meanings — who keep so few,
More likely to name an airport for an actor
Or athlete than “First of May” or “Fourth of July.”
In the movies we dream up, our captured heroes
Tell the interrogator their commanding officer’s name
Is Colonel Donald Duck — he writes it down, code
Of a lowbrow memory so assured it’s nearly
Aristocratic. Some say the doomed firefighters
Before they hurried into the doomed towers wrote
Their Social Security numbers on their forearms.
We can imagine them kidding about it a little.
“No man is great if he thinks he is” — Will Rogers:
A kidder, a skeptic. A Cherokee, a survivor
Of expropriation. A roper, a card. Remembered
A while yet. He had turned sixteen the year
That Frederick Douglass died. Douglass was twelve
When Emily Dickinson was born. Is even Donald
Half-forgotten? — Who are the Americans, not
A people by blood or religion? As it turned out,
The donated blood not needed, except as meaning.
At a Sports Bar the night before, the guy
Who shaved off all his body hair and screamed
The name of God with his box cutter in his hand.
O Americans — as Marianne Moore would say,
Whence is our courage? Is what holds us together
A gluttonous dreamy thriving? Whence our being?
In the dark roots of our music, impudent and profound?
We inscribed God’s name onto the dollar bill
In 1958, and who remembers why, among
Forgotten glyphs and meanings, the Deistic
Mystical and Masonic totems of the Founders:
The Eye afloat above the uncapped Pyramid,
Hexagram of Stars protecting the Eagle’s head
From terror of pox, from plague and radiation.
The Western face of the pyramid is dark.
And if they blow up the Statue of Liberty —
Then the survivors might likely in grief, terror
And excess build a dozen more, or produce
A catchy song about it, its meaning beyond
Meaning as those old symbols. The wilds of thought
Of Katharine Lee Bates: Till selfish gain
No longer stain the banner of the free. O
Beautiful for patriot dream that sees
Beyond the years, and Ray Charles singing it,
Alabaster cities, amber waves, purple majesties.
Thine every flaw. Thy liberty in law. O beautiful.
The Raelettes in sequins and high heels for a live
Performance -- or in the studio to burn the record
In sneakers and headphones, engineers at soundboards,
Musicians, all concentrating, faces as grave with
What purpose as the harbor Statue herself, O
Beautiful for liberating strife: the broken
Shackles visible at her feet, her Elvis lips —
Liberty: not Abundance and not Beatitude —
Her enigmatic scowl, her spikey crown.
Reprinted from Gulf Music by permission of the author.
Bio
Robert Pinsky was Poet Laureate of the United States from 1997 to 2000. Creator and director of the Favorite Poem Project and poetry editor at Slate, he also teaches in the graduate writing program at Boston University.