An inaugural poem of protest by Robert Pinsky

Robert Pinsky at CNN:

170120100154-robert-pinsky-headshot-new-medium-plus-169'Exile and Lightning'

You choose your ancestors our
Ancestor Ralph Ellison wrote.
Now, fellow-descendants, we endure a
Moment of charismatic indecency
And sanctimonious greed. Falsehood
Beyond shame. Our Polish Grandfather
Milosz and African American Grandmother Brooks
Endured worse than this.
Fight first, then fiddle she wrote.
Our great-grandmother Emma Lazarus
Wrote that the flame of the lamp of the
Mother of Exiles is "Imprisoned lightning."
My fellow children of exile
And lightning, the indecency
Constructs its own statuary.
But our uncle Ernesto Cardenal
Says, sabemos que el pueblo
la derribará un día. The people
Will tear it down. Milosz says,
Beautiful and very young
, meaning recent,
Are poetry and philo-sophia, meaning science,
Her ally in the service of the good . …

Their enemies, he wrote, have delivered
Themselves to destruction.
"Un dia," and "very young" — that long
Ancestral view of time:
Inheritors, el pueblo, fellow-exiles:
All the quicker our need to
Fight and make music. As Gwendolyn
Brooks wrote, To civilize a space.
From here.