.
The Burden of Truth
Our founders feared and could foresee
that politics might come to be
far more intense than mere debate
of means to best perpetuate
the liberty they’d given birth
unparalleled in all the earth,
secured by selfless sacrifice
of those becoming precious price.
Thus, knowing pure democracy
was tyranny’s hypocrisy,
they joined in wise republic form
our weighted states to bear the storm
installing as priority
those states in their majority
as arbiter should disagreed
election bring to light the need
for states with powers cleaved to stand
denying despots full command
of destiny remanded whole
to chosen who by law control,
as legislatures, means to thwart
a coup where some would dare resort
to massive scale election theft
that leaves them all in fact bereft
of union made to guarantee,
to each, continued liberty
beyond the reach of infamy
from which those founders set us free
by vote the peoples’ House would cast
one each per state until it passed
by proof of state plurality
the bona fide finality
by which this nation would decide
all grievance fairly heard and tried
as only sovereign states could do
to keep the faith they must renew
in leadership that represents
sufficient sum of their consents.
Epilogue:
Down ballot victims fare far worse
without redress against such curse
where fraud can simply scale its lie
beyond the right for just reply
to grievance that if left untried
might well be justice thus denied.
.
.
I enjoyed this poem, and certainly agree with what it is saying. And it seems to me quite a trick you’ve pulled, Christopher, to write a poem of this length in only two sentences …. that second one would be interesting to diagram. My poet-husband, who edits my poems for me, often thinks my sentences are too long. (And he’s almost always right.) Maybe it’s just me, but I think your flow would be easier to follow if there were a couple more periods. The rhymes and meter are really good.
Cynthia —
I appreciate all of ypur reactions. I think meter, rhyme, line breaks, and stanza breaks together create natural seeming, otherwise unmarked punctuation.
That permits much longer thoughts to be put together than one would ever attempt in prose. I lean toward letting the complete thought dictate sentence length if technique can support it. I think the completeness generally has greater impact and becomes far more memorable. It’s a fine line to walk, though, and I appreciate that not everyone will agree.
And all in two sentences! Wonderful. In Stanzas 4, 7 and 8 I began to hear strains of Gilbert & Sullivan.
Carole —
Thank you. I’m deeply flattered by your reference to the magically talented Gilbert and Sullivan.