in the NYT, thanks to Mary M.
William Shakespeare Revisits His Sonnet 18
“Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?”
That likening hath never been less apt
Today, our summers kindle flood and flame,
To which humanity might not adapt
That summer I once dared to denigrate,
Compared to now, was such a pleasant place
I fear this torrid tempest won’t abate,
What spiteful irony I now must face!
I once lamented summer’s fleeting span;
In hindsight, there was much I hadst to learn
“Eternal summer,” ’tis a frying pan:
Without a change of course, the world will burn
My modest sonnet, fate hath cruelly read
Now, summer only warms my heart with dread.
Joel Watson
San Diego
The Gettysburg Regress
Four score months, almost seven years ago, our voters brought forth on this continent a new president, conceived in Queens, and dedicated to the proposition that “when you’re a star, they let you do it.”
Now we are engaged in a great culture war, testing whether that president, or any president so conceived and so dedicated, can elude censure. The internet is the great battlefield of that war, with some very fine people on both sides. We have come to dedicate a large portion of our field of attention to websites and apps as the final resting place for our opinions that they may live forever. It is not altogether fitting or proper that we should do this.
And, among the nonsense, we can no longer enjoy the love we make — in case we accidentally procreate — with abortion newly struck down. The brave women, living in dread, who struggle in fear, have old men to blame for it, and deserve nothing less than to have us now act.
The world must long note, and long remember, what he did on Jan. 6 after an election year. It is for us the voters, then, to be dedicated without fear to the unfinished but necessary work of eternal vigilance.
It is for us the voters to be dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that in spite of what we may have seen on Reddit, we take increased devotion to that cause of facts over emotion — that we hereby resolve that Gold Star families shall not have grieved in vain — that this nation, however odd, shall only give birth to freedom — and that, though we may not always get what we want from our leaders, we always get what we vote for.
Jason Luban
Ronda, Spain