Looking for poems that can be related to today's administration.

[Mutley]

Old or new, I'm looking for poems that still ring true about this administration, even if they were not originally written about the US. Here's an example:

England in 1819

An old man, mad, blind, despised and dying King.
Princes the dregs of their dull race, who flow
Through public scorn,- mud from a muddy spring;
Rulers who neither see nor feel nor know,
But leechlike to their fainting country cling
Till they drop, blind in blood, without a blow.
A people starved and stabbed in th' untilled field;
An army, whom liberticide and prey
Makes as a two edged sword to all who wield;
Golden and sanguine laws which tempt and slay;
Religion Christless, Godless - a book sealed;
A Senate, Times worst statute, unrepealed -
Are graves from which a glorious Phantom may
Burst, to illumine our tempestuous day.

-Percey Shelley

and also "Holy Willie's Prayer" by Robert Burns, which sounds like it is talking about Pat Robertson, but it isn't. Thanks!

[RagingInMiami]

1. "The Second Coming"

W.B. Yeats, 1919

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

-- William Butler Yeats

[stillcool]

2. Rudyard Kipling (1917)

Mesopotamia

Rudyard Kipling (1917)

They shall not return to us, the resolute, the young,
The eager and whole-hearted whom we gave:
But the men who left them thriftily to die in their own dung,
Shall they come with years and honour to the grave?

They shall not return to us, the strong men coldly slain
In sight of help denied from day to day:
But the men who edged their agonies and chid them in their pain,
Are they too strong and wise to put away?

Our dead shall not return to us while Day and Night divide -
Never while the bars of sunset hold.
But the idle-minded overlings who quibbled while they died,
Shall they thrust for high employments as of old?

Shall we only threaten and be angry for an hour?
When the storm is ended shall we find
How softly but how swiftly they have sidled back to power
By the favour and contrivance of their kind?

Even while they soothe us, while they promise large amends,
Even while they make a show of fear,
Do they call upon their debtors, and take counsel with their friends,
To confirm and re-establish each career?

Their lives cannot repay us - their death could not undo -
The shame that they have laid upon our race.
But the slothfulness that wasted and the arrogance that slew,
Shall we leave it unabated in its place?

[pretzel4gore]

3. here's an amateur effort written about msm, but it applies to bush gov too

Snowball Rolling Down a Hill

The snowball rolling down a hill
got a problem gets to hell,
For as it gains in speed and size
its strength of will’s epitomized,
Forgets that twas a tiny thing
when it began to rampaging;
Down the mountainside it flies
getting meaner as it tries
To add some more to its growing bulk
freezing ice and snow and rock,
Yes men and women in alpine lairs,
trees and fields, goats and bear,
Get impressed into the weight,
nothing in the way escapes
the snowball rolling down a hill
without a worry in this world;
But down below the desert plains
bakes in warming sun’s embrace
and there it finally comes to rest
its thundering noise and danger less,
It learns this lesson very well:
that which to us is fine, is hell,
to a snowball rolling down a hill.

[ailsagirl]

4. A few pithy words...

To rule is easy, to govern difficult.
~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil;
in its worst state, an intolerable one.
~ Thomas Paine

It's not the voting that's democracy; it's the counting.
~ Tom Stoppard

[govegan]

5. Lorca's "New York"

Sister, that would be Percy Bysshe Shelley

as in

Never but to vengeance driven
When the patriot's spirit shriven
Seeks in death its native heaven!
There, to desolation hurled,
Widowed love may watch thy bier,
Balm thee with its dying tear. from "To the Republicans of North America"

Anyway ......

Lorca (as in Federico Garcia)

wrote in Poeta en Nueva York (1930)

Beneath all the statistics
there is a drop of duck's blood.
Beneath all the columns
there is a drop of a sailor's blood.
<skip>
I attack the conspiring
of these empty offices
that will not broadcast sufferings,
that rub out the plans of the forest,
and I offer myself to be eaten by the packed-up cattle
when their mooing fills the valley
where the Hudson is getting drunk on its oil.

(as translated by Robert Bly)

[govegan]

6. perhaps that would be ms. us

didn't mean to be too familiar with the sister term,
just in a hurry.

Lorca's New York covers a fair amount of ground, but in regards to today's admin, the final lines just seem very pertinent.

[catbert836]

7. T.S. Eliot- The Hollow Men

We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats' feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar

Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;

Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom
Remember us -- if at all -- not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.

[LeftishBrit]

8. These could be ultimate epitaphs for members of this administration

Hillaire Belloc (1870-1953)

On the Politician

Here richly, with ridiculous display,
The Politician's corpse was laid away.
While all of his acquaintance sneered and slanged,
I wept: for I had longed to see him hanged.


And even more appropriate:

Rudyard Kipling:


A DEAD STATESMAN



I could not dig: I dared not rob:
Therefore I lied to please the mob.
Now all my lies are proved untrue
And I must face the men I slew.
What tale shall serve me here among
Mine angry and defrauded young?

[LeftishBrit]

9. And some of the verses from Byron's 'Vision of Judgement'

Actually, they make me think more of Reagan than GWB; but certainly appropriate to many a modern 'king': 'a tool from first to last':



In the first year of Freedom's second dawn 8
Died George the Third; although no tyrant, one
Who shielded tyrants, till each sense withdrawn
Left him nor mental nor external sun: 9 <60>
A better farmer 10 ne'er brushed dew from lawn,
A worse king never left a realm undone!
He died — but left his subjects still behind,
One half as mad — and t'other no less blind.

.......

IX
He died! his death made no great stir on earth: <65>
His burial made some pomp; there was profusion
Of velvet — gilding — brass — and no great dearth
Of aught but tears — save those shed by collusion:
For these things may be bought at their true worth;
Of elegy there was the due infusion— <70>
Bought also; and the torches, cloaks and banners,
Heralds, and relics of old Gothic manners,


X
Formed a sepulchral melodrame. Of all
The fools who flocked to swell or see the show,
Who cared about the corpse? The funeral <75>
Made the attraction, and the black the woe,
There throbbed not there a thought which pierced the pall;
And when the gorgeous coffin was laid low,
It seemed the mockery of hell to fold
The rottenness of eighty years in gold. <80>

....



XVII
But ere he could return to his repose,
A Cherub flapped his right wing o'er his eyes— <130>
At which Saint Peter yawned, and rubbed his nose:
"Saint porter," said the angel, "prithee rise!"
Waving a goodly wing, which glowed, as glows
An earthly peacock's tail, with heavenly dyes:
To which the saint replied, "Well, what's the matter? <135>
"Is Lucifer come back with all this clatter?"


XVIII
"No," quoth the Cherub: "George the Third is dead."
"And who is George the Third?" replied the apostle:
"What George? what Third?" "The King of England," said
The angel. "Well! he won't find kings to jostle <140>
Him on his way; but does he wear his head? 13
Because the last we saw here had a tustle,
And ne'er would have got into Heaven's good graces,
Had he not flung his head in all our faces.

......

XXII
The Angel answered, "Peter! do not pout:
The King who comes has head and all entire, <170>
And never knew much what it was about—
He did as doth the puppet — by its wire,
And will be judged like all the rest, no doubt:
My business and your own is not to inquire
Into such matters, but to mind our cue— <175>
Which is to act as we are bid to do."


......

XXXVII
He merely bent his diabolic brow
An instant; and then raising it, he stood <290>
In act to assert his right or wrong, and show
Cause why King George by no means could or should
Make out a case to be exempt from woe
Eternal, more than other kings, endued
With better sense and hearts, whom History mentions, <295>
Who long have "paved Hell with their good intentions."

.........

XXXVIII
Michael began: "What wouldst thou with this man,
Now dead, and brought before the Lord? What ill
Hath he wrought since his mortal race began,
That thou canst claim him? Speak! and do thy will, <300>
If it be just: if in this earthly span
He hath been greatly failing to fulfil
His duties as a king and mortal, say,
And he is thine; if not — let him have way."


.......

XLXLIV
"'Tis true, he was a tool from first to last <345>
(I have the workmen safe); but as a tool
So let him be consumed. From out the past
Of ages, since mankind have known the rule
Of monarchs — from the bloody rolls amassed
Of Sin and Slaughter — from the C‘sars' school, <350>
Take the worst pupil; and produce a reign
More drenched with gore, more cumbered with the slain.


XLV
"He ever warred with freedom and the free:
Nations as men, home subjects, foreign foes,
So that they uttered the word 'Liberty!' <355>
Found George the Third their first opponent. Whose
History was ever stained as his will be
With national and individual woes?
I grant his household abstinence; I grant
His neutral virtues, which most monarchs want; <360>


XLVI
"I know he was a constant consort; own
He was a decent sire, and middling lord.
All this is much, and most upon a throne;
As temperance, if at Apicius' board,
Is more than at an anchorite's supper shown. <365>
I grant him all the kindest can accord;
And this was well for him, but not for those
Millions who found him what Oppression chose.


XLVII
"The New World shook him off; the Old yet groans
Beneath what he and his prepared, if not <370>
Completed: he leaves heirs on many thrones
To all his vices, without what begot
Compassion for him — his tame virtues; drones
Who sleep, or despots who have now forgot
A lesson which shall be re-taught them, wake <375>
Upon the thrones of earth; but let them quake!

[DemoTex]

10. Wilfred Owen on war; Carl Sandburg on religion.

Dulce Et Decorum Est

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of disappointed shells that dropped behind.

GAS! Gas! Quick, boys!-- An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And floundering like a man in fire or lime.--
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,--
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

Wilfred Owen
1893-1918

TO A CONTEMPORARY BUNKSHOOTER

You come along. . . tearing your shirt. . . yelling about
Jesus.
Where do you get that stuff?
What do you know about Jesus?
Jesus had a way of talking soft and outside of a few
bankers and higher-ups among the con men of Jerusalem
everybody liked to have this Jesus around because
he never made any fake passes and everything
he said went and he helped the sick and gave the
people hope.


You come along squirting words at us, shaking your fist
and calling us all damn fools so fierce the froth slobbers
over your lips. . . always blabbing we're all
going to hell straight off and you know all about it.


I've read Jesus' words. I know what he said. You don't
throw any scare into me. I've got your number. I
know how much you know about Jesus.
He never came near clean people or dirty people but
they felt cleaner because he came along. It was your
crowd of bankers and business men and lawyers
hired the sluggers and murderers who put Jesus out
of the running.


I say the same bunch backing you nailed the nails into
the hands of this Jesus of Nazareth. He had lined
up against him the same crooks and strong-arm men
now lined up with you paying your way.

This Jesus was good to look at, smelled good, listened
good. He threw out something fresh and beautiful
from the skin of his body and the touch of his hands
wherever he passed along.
You slimy bunkshooter, you put a smut on every human
blossom in reach of your rotten breath belching
about hell-fire and hiccupping about this Man who
lived a clean life in Galilee.

When are you going to quit making the carpenters build
emergency hospitals for women and girls driven
crazy with wrecked nerves from your gibberish about
Jesus--I put it to you again: Where do you get that
stuff; what do you know about Jesus?


Go ahead and bust all the chairs you want to. Smash
a whole wagon load of furniture at every performance.
Turn sixty somersaults and stand on your
nutty head. If it wasn't for the way you scare the
women and kids I'd feel sorry for you and pass the hat.
I like to watch a good four-flusher work, but not when
he starts people puking and calling for the doctors.
I like a man that's got nerve and can pull off a great
original performance, but you--you're only a bug-
house peddler of second-hand gospel--you're only
shoving out a phoney imitation of the goods this
Jesus wanted free as air and sunlight.

You tell people living in shanties Jesus is going to fix it
up all right with them by giving them mansions in
the skies after they're dead and the worms have
eaten 'em.
You tell $6 a week department store girls all they need
is Jesus; you take a steel trust wop, dead without
having lived, gray and shrunken at forty years of
age, and you tell him to look at Jesus on the cross
and he'll be all right.
You tell poor people they don't need any more money
on pay day and even if it's fierce to be out of a job,
Jesus'll fix that up all right, all right--all they gotta
do is take Jesus the way you say.
I'm telling you Jesus wouldn't stand for the stuff you're
handing out. Jesus played it different. The bankers
and lawyers of Jerusalem got their sluggers and
murderers to go after Jesus just because Jesus
wouldn't play their game. He didn't sit in with
the big thieves.

I don't want a lot of gab from a bunkshooter in my religion.
I won't take my religion from any man who never works
except with his mouth and never cherishes any memory
except the face of the woman on the American
silver dollar.

I ask you to come through and show me where you're
pouring out the blood of your life.

I've been to this suburb of Jerusalem they call Golgotha,
where they nailed Him, and I know if the story is
straight it was real blood ran from His hands and
the nail-holes, and it was real blood spurted in red
drops where the spear of the Roman soldier rammed
in between the ribs of this Jesus of Nazareth.

Carl Sandburg
Chicago Poems