marianne moore by way of james baldwin

I try to avoid defending or condemning other people (except for the people who set themselves up as leaders, elected or otherwise -- they have a special responsibility). I figure people are limited and flawed and they make bad decisions. I know that's true of me. 

Anyway, I was reading James Baldwin the other day and he quoted Marianne Moore: The weak overcomes its menace, the strong overcomes itself.

And that is true no matter how rich or poor people are. But everybody makes choices in a context -- emotional, familial, social, ethical, economic. And the older I get the more I see how rigged the game has been for so long. And I can see how hard most of us have tried to avoid seeing that this country got wealthy through slavery, followed by Jim Crow (in the south and north), followed by white flight and the war on drugs. Also, I begin to understand the cost of that denial, for everyone involved.

Of course, the game is always rigged -- unless there's a revolution going on, rich people can always protect their interests. But for a long time it was rigged, explicitly, by color. Even if we had been willing to face up that (and we haven't been!) it would not have been easy to change it.


And now? It's hard to say what is happening now. I guess I have to keep hoping that we will become better human beings. 


End of lecture, with apologies. I am feeling sad this morning because my aunt Marion died -- not that I knew her well, but I know she was my mom's favorite sister. She is the third of my mom's siblings to die at 90, in the past five years.

Nevertheless

Marianne Moore

you've seen a strawberry
that's had a struggle; yet
was, where the fragments met,

a hedgehog or a star-
fish for the multitude
of seeds. What better food

than apple seeds - the fruit
within the fruit - locked in
like counter-curved twin

hazelnuts? Frost that kills
the little rubber-plant -
leaves of kok-sagyyz-stalks, can't

harm the roots; they still grow
in frozen ground. Once where
there was a prickley-pear -

leaf clinging to a barbed wire,
a root shot down to grow
in earth two feet below;

as carrots from mandrakes
or a ram's-horn root some-
times. Victory won't come

to me unless I go
to it; a grape tendril
ties a knot in knots till

knotted thirty times - so
the bound twig that's under-
gone and over-gone, can't stir.

The weak overcomes its
menace, the strong over-
comes itself. What is there

like fortitude! What sap
went through that little thread
to make the cherry red!