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A House Divided Against Itself

A rondeau redoublé inspired
by Dennis Prager’s piece here. 

In troubled times this will take place:
A war of words, a cruel riposte;
Deep truths that bleeding hearts won’t face
So they destroy what matters most.

The past saw children raise a toast
To those who gave their first embrace.
But now they block, betray and boast
“In troubled times this will take place!”

Invoking hate they speak of race
With left-wing quotes from the Huff Post.
They stomp and sneer. They shout their case—
A war of words, a cruel riposte.

They bend to President Milquetoast,
Who lies to please the Party base
And blithely buries coast to coast
Deep truths that bleeding hearts won’t face.

Why must false facts as frail as lace
Leave naive relatives engrossed?
They do not grasp what they embrace,
So they destroy what matters most.

Devotion flees without a trace
And duty dies with poison dosed.
The Lord alone can find lost grace
When love for kin gives up the ghost
In troubled times.

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Brian Yapko is a lawyer who also writes poetry. He lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

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27 Responses

  1. Susan Jarvis Bryant

    Brian, you have translated the words of Dennis Prager’s piece into a perfectly crafted Rondeau Redoublé (one of my favorite forms) and in doing so captured the very heartbeat of his message… and what a tragic tale it is.

    Stanza 5 shouts out to me… those “false facts as frail as lace” (a top-notch alliterative image) have been responsible for so much destruction. That’s why the truth matters. The truth really does set us free. Lies have many trusting a draconian government that pretends to care.

    Brian, thank you for this much-needed poem in troubled times. I hope its beautifully crafted, heartfelt words reach far and wide.

    Reply
    • Brian A Yapko

      Susan, thank you from the bottom of my heart for your generous comment. As you know, I didn’t initially plan to write a poem about this Prager article but I found myself so upset by the cruelty of those who would cancel parents and grandparents over politics that I had to put pen to paper. I composed this in the form of a rondeau redouble because I wanted to highlight this senseless, virtue-signaling cruelty being repeated over and over (albeit with different variations) in each home.

      Thank you for your much-needed poems as well, Susan. Your work has been one of my most important inspirations ever since I discovered the Society of Classical Poets. These are indeed troubled times of deceit and manipulation and I hope the internet gets flooded with truth.

      Reply
  2. Joshua C. Frank

    Wow. This one is great, as usual… both for the poem itself and for bringing our attention to what’s going on. You’ve expressed it so well: “They do not grasp what they embrace, / So they destroy what matters most. / Devotion flees without a trace / And duty dies with poison dosed.”

    Those quotes in the linked article are just sickening… I may have to write a poem of my own on the subject. Thank you for notifying us about this trend. What do they hate so much about Christianity that the woke would rather deny their children grandparents than allow them to be exposed to the faintest scent of it? I’m getting the impression that many of these woke parents would rather see their children die than see them become conservative or Christian.

    Reply
    • Brian A Yapko

      Thank you so much, Josh! I hope you do write a poem about this subject. There are a lot of voices here who deserve to be represented. It’s truly a sad state of affairs when family would rather be estranged than accept like grown-ups the fact that others have different legitimate political views. What is this, the Civil War? Well, perhaps it is. That’s why I chose the title of my poem — I wanted to echo Abraham Lincoln echoing Matthew 12:25.

      Reply
      • Joshua C. Frank

        I think we’re headed toward a second Civil War among political party lines. We’re there in many ways, but unless the leftists squash our side almost completely, it’s going to break out into a bloody war.

        By the way, thank you for directing me to Dennis Prager. I’m learning about a lot of things that, while horrible, are great material for poetry!

  3. Paul Freeman

    A well-crafted poem, Brian. As usual.

    The problem as I see it is that both sides believe they are in possession of ‘the Truth’. There’s no leeway, which is sad. Not everyone left of centre is jumping on the woke wagon, and not everyone right of centre is a Q groupie.

    Perhaps the last line of Prager’s article should have said: “If you have a child with a different outlook on life to you, and who talks to you, give him or her a hug.” Throwing the ‘woke’ label in at the end like that damaged any legitimacy the article had built up.

    That’s all.

    Reply
    • Brian A Yapko

      Paul, thank you for this. I think you are right and that any parent or child who feels compelled to estrange themselves from beloved family should think twice about what they’re giving up, what values they’re actually triaging as most important. There’s a line from a song in Hair (of all things!) that always gets me. The song is “Easy to Be Hard” and the challenging question is “Do you only care about the bleeding crowd?” In other words, there are some people who find it easier to love strangers in the abstract than the reality of flesh-and-blood relatives and friends. I personally hold to honoring one’s father and mother as stated in the Fifth Commandment, so when any such family schism takes place — left/right, right/left or otherwise (I don’t much care about the configuration) — I just find that level of estrangement very troubling indeed.

      Reply
  4. Joshua C. Frank

    I understood it to be shorthand for: “If you have a child more liberal than yourself who talks to you, even if his or her liberalism goes so far as to fall within woke territory, give him or her a hug.” Actually, giving your child a hug is good advice regardless of politics.

    This bit may surprise you, but I agree that the Republican Party (as well as its equivalents in other countries) doesn’t have a monopoly on truth. Only God has that. Christianity teaches everything God has explicitly revealed, but not everything He knows, which no human can understand, any more than dogs can understand everything humans know.

    Reply
      • Brian A Yapko

        Josh, I forgot to say one thing in my reply to your comment about why people do this. The question you raise, to paraphrase, is why the woke would hate Christianity and conservatism so much that they would deny children their grandparents to shield them from it? I believe that most of these angry people believe that they are taking a principled stand and that, somehow, they are “fighting the good fight.” That type of religious zeal and confidence in the rightness of their cause makes it very difficult to find common ground. Yes, this phenomenon can be found on the right as well as the left but I would wager that it is considerably more common on the left because so much of the left is about breaking down the family, eliminating what they see as forms of identity-bondage (which conservatives tend to see as rational, sober societal structure), turning mothers into birthing persons, saying gender doesn’t exist, and on and on ad infinitum. It’s not hard to make the leap that a left that tends to hate religion is not going to honor the Fifth Commandment, and it’s not hard to make the leap that a left that no longer believes in marriage or other institutions sacred to conservatives are going to have an easier time dismantling the family.

      • Joshua C. Frank

        All of that makes sense. They can call it what they like, but they’re fighting on the side of evil. Once I realized this, I had to switch sides and leave liberalism behind.

      • Joseph S. Salemi

        There was a saying used by Thalmann, the leader of the German Communist party during the Weimar Republic. It was “For a Communist, the front is everywhere.” By this he meant that dedicated Communists would always and everywhere think first about their political commitments, and act and speak in accord with them. You had to be ready to argue and fight on all occasions, even the smallest and most trivial.

        Priscilla Hiss, the fanatical wife of the Communist traitor Alger Hiss, was famous for this kind of thing. It is reported that when someone said “Good morning” to her, she’d normally reply “It’s not a good morning for the oppressed workers!”

        Is this religious? Of course it is. It is the secular version of “Preach the Word of God, in season and out of season!”

        Left-liberals, feminists, sexual perverts, and wokesters today are no different. For them the front is everywhere. They are attuned to pick up any “incorrect” attitude or speech pattern or even the slightest hint of unorthodox belief, and to attack it immediately. Just listen to those dumb bitches on “The View.”

        Of course there people hate Christianity — especially Catholicism and the tougher forms of Protestantism — because they simply cannot bear the existence of any counter-religion to their own. But what they especially hate is Western culture itself, which is historically bound up with Christian belief and practice. And this is why they are doing everything in their power to degrade, cancel, and emasculate every facet of it.

        As Brian says, “religious zeal and confidence in the rightness of their cause makes it very difficult to find common ground.” The only common ground the left wants for us is a lime pit.

      • Brian A Yapko

        Joseph, your observations here are so spot-on they should be required reading for anyone interested in actually preventing societal collapse and preserving Western civilization. Your comments on other poems discussing succedaneous religion have strongly impacted my views on current events and, especially, the culture wars we are now engaged in. It’s difficult to imagine any common ground with leftism when their solution is to cancel people and history and biology and tear things down.

  5. Roy Eugene Peterson

    Beautifully done, as always. The repetition of the words in this rondeau are particularly salient and speak to our present quandary! You had wonderful meter and rhyme, and I could taste the alliterations in several verses. I agree with Susan, a great poem that needs presenting to a wide audience–like the Democratic National Convention!

    Reply
    • Brian A Yapko

      Thank you very much, Roy. When the Democratic Convention comes up I’ll plan on sending this to New Mexico’s senators and representatives. It won’t get anywhere but you never know!

      Reply
  7. Cynthia Erlandson

    Good poem, Brian. I, too, love the phrase “false faces frail as lace.” I listen to Dennis’ radio show. He definitely has a lot of wisdom.

    Reply
    • Brian A Yapko

      Thank you very much, Cynthia. I’ve been following Dennis Prager for a few years now. I don’t always agree with 100% of what he says, but it’s probably a good 90%. He has a gift for articulating many difficult ideas and observing unnoticed truths in ways that even I can understand and follow!

      Reply
  8. C.B Anderson

    Dennis Prager is a national treasure, and so, Brian, are you quickly becoming. To tackle such a complicated subject with such aplomb and with such prosodic deftness is a nice trick, but I feel, as I always feel when I read one of your poems, that you aren’t kidding.

    Reply
    • Brian A Yapko

      This is as generous a comment as I’ve ever received, C.B., for which I thank you! As for kidding… I spent a whole law career writing almost exclusively from the mind. I can do it, but it rarely interests me to do so. When I write poetry I prefer to write from the heart. My work kept me from doing so for a long time.

      Reply
  9. Jeff Eardley

    Brian, thanks for this. I have no knowledge of Dennis Prager but I get the drift of the subject material.. Thank you for “Milquetoast” which is a new word for me and I love the rondeau redouble format. I always take something from your words. Thank you again for tickling the brain cells once more.

    Reply
    • Brian A Yapko

      Thank you very much, Jeff. Dennis Prager’s insights may very well be applicable to the same culture wars taking place in the UK as in the USA so his work is well worth a read. He’s articulate and generally presents well-reasoned arguments which support common-sense conservatism. As for “milquetoast”, it’s an odd word to be sure. American-coined, I believe, and a perhaps over-mild insult to the current occupant of the White House. However, “-ost” rhymes are hard to come by!

      Reply
  10. Margaret Coats

    The last two stanzas bring the poem to a lovely conclusion. It’s good to take up the issue and to step back to the more profound perspective. In recent years a little less troubled than the current one, Dennis Prager several times discussed the related problem of psychologists and counselors advising adults to break off with parents who cause them any stress or discomfort. He pointed out that such advisors bear responsibility for nullifying a commandment of God on their own authority, as well as for contradicting the near universal practice of civilized human society. And for what reason? To avoid any disturbance to the narcissistic feelings of a person who remains too immature to cope with life’s difficulties! Granted that there may be parental mistakes or even abuse involved, the vast majority of adults, after living on their own for a while, can develop the powers of mind to control emotions and treat their parents with civility, at least, unless they insist on being underdeveloped children forever. Probably adult children who have political disagreements with their parents also need to be told, “Grow up!” Political instructors and supporters who encourage ostracization of parents may deserve stronger language.

    Reply
    • Brian A Yapko

      Thank you very much indeed, Margaret, for the wisdom in this comment — one which addresses the immaturity of adult children who never grow up enough to tolerate views which do not validate their own. Yes, the psychologists and counselors (along with every media-advice giver such as Oprah, Dr. Phil, ad nauseam) have encouraged a culture that is so toxically preoccupied with “me, my needs, what about me” that we’ve spawned a generation of narcissists who do not know how to behave dutifully and honorably to their own family. It’s so much easier to care about strangers who you never actually have to interact with, feed, hug, support. A cheap way of feeling and appearing virtuous without actually being virtuous.

      Reply
    • Brian A Yapko

      Thank you, Josh. This sci-fi story is painfully accurate in its depiction of the insanity and gross intolerance demonstrated by the anti-religious, anti-cisgender Transgender Hegemony and the Woke Capos who support them.

      Reply

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