Showing posts with label Slavery. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Slavery. Show all posts

Tuesday, February 7, 2017

Rethinking The Elect


                            The Elect

Take that long-suffering slave:  if she instead
Were master, could descent dissent and shed
Vile arrogance slaves shirk and in its stead
Renounce the life that life inherited?

Take that starved, broken pauper:  if instead
Of life so harsh he often would be dead
He had a fuller purse, was fuller fed
Would he have known to offer paupers bread?

Take that queer soul who's “different”:  if instead
He'd turned out “normal” would he think a dead
Queer's better than a live one, too, and spread
Intolerance majorities have bred?

Is this not Grace?  Spared from such tests as these,
Has God not favored his minorities?

In a time of Trump when I fear many devalue diversity and many more do not see the frequent grace in minority, struggle, and lack of material wealth, I highlight this poem from Charms and Knots.  I also highlight the poem for a time when many no longer appreciate the endless powers of formalist verse.  Apart from the inherent power of sonnet form, twelve same-rhymed lines followed by two fresh rhymes actually participate in the grace and rarity of difference (indexical expression of the point to use Peirce's terminology).