Saturday, January 21, 2017

Criticism

Poem by my mother, Lorna Anderson, 1963

This is an hour to be critical,
To take selective tweezers, and to grasp
The public figure meant to represent us all:
Dissect his words, slice superfine his acts

And place them in the light of studied thought
As 'neath a microscope, and single out
This careless attitude, that shaded turn,
As tissues, cells and germs that bode disease.

This is not time for tolerance or love,
Nor gentleness or patience; it is time
For surgery, implacable and swift,
Or liberty be forfeit.

(Excerpt)

3 comments:

  1. Wise words. Do you know who she was writing about?

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  2. I'm not sure. But it was the height of the Vietnam War, under Kennedy, then Johnson that year; and my brother had been drafted. So that is probably the context.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Very appropriate words for this week. - Margy

    ReplyDelete

I'm having to moderate all comments because Blogger seems to have a problem notifying me. Sorry about that. I will review them several times daily, though, until this issue is fixed.

Also, I have word verification on, because I found out that not only do I get spam without it, but it gets passed on to anyone commenting in that thread. Not cool!

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