I don’t know what caused so many people to suddenly begin to follow me here— I joined Substack to read newsletters by others, and didn’t realize my name was even viewable. I thank you for the unexpected interest. I don’t know if I will post often, or much at all, but for January 20, already arrived on the East Coast now, I offer, in honor of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s belief in history’s long arc that may still bend toward justice, a poem first published on January 20 eight years ago (not, that year, MLK, Jr.’s day; only the inauguration), by the Academy of American Poets in their Poem-a-Day mailing. To see it in its correct formatting on their website: <https://poets.org/poem/let-them-not-say>
The poem was first written with the crisis of the biosphere in mind, but was published as a poem of political and social compact as well. It is a grief to me that its not-enough remains true. Even so, it remains a poem that continues to hope to write its own existence into meaninglessness to the future it imagines looking back on our choices and actions. Martin Luther King, Jr’s future: of justice, of respect for all beings, human and beyond. Of, perhaps, greater accuracy of understanding, greater gratitude for one another’s being here, making this earth what it is together, and greater kindness.
Let Them Not Say
Let them not say: we did not see it.
We saw.
Let them not say: we did not hear it.
We heard.
Let them not say: they did not taste it.
We ate, we trembled.
Let them not say: it was not spoken, not written.
We spoke,
we witnessed with voices and hands.
Let them not say: they did nothing.
We did not-enough.
Let them say, as they must say something:
A kerosene beauty.
It burned.
Let them say we warmed ourselves by it,
read by its light, praised,
and it burned.
Jane Hirshfield