Now

Originally published at jeremyjarratt.com. You can comment here or there.

Finally, the United States of America has confidantly voted into office its first black President, and today is the first day of the Future after all. I am so proud again to be an American.

We owe a tremendous debt to black, female, latino, and other “minority” voters, many of whom have until today been disenfranchised - not just for what they have done today, but for what they have done in the past to bring us to this moment.

I can’t help but recall the more joyful lines of Walt Whitman’s loving ballad to his President:

O Captain my Captain! our fearful trip is done;
The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won;
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring

O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;
Rise up—for you the flag is flung—for you the bugle trills;
For you bouquets and ribbon’d wreaths—for you the shores a-crowding;
For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;

The ship is anchor’d safe and sound, its voyage closed and done;
From fearful trip, the victor ship, comes in with object won.

(Of course, i have omitted stanzas which are not needed and do not serve this day; the poem, after all, is an elegy.)