For Anita Hill
What could she say at graduation?
Be good to those different from you,
Stop violence, work hard. Her name
An inspiration to feminism; so many
Honorary degrees bestowed; but I wonder,
In her heart, is she secretly conservative?
Her graduation talk could have been taken
Either way. It was fine. One glorious cliché.
I wonder if she thought, “there, enjoy that speech;
It means whatever the new york times tells you it means.
Frankly, I’m not who you think I am. If the speech
Was boring, yet boredom is a kind of peace, after all.”
We try. Damn, we try. The humblest lips belong to eternity.
Beneath improvement, vermin propagate;
Beneath headlines, holy understandings flow.
Beneath rhetoric, rhetoric speaks what all rhetoric doesn’t know.
Everyone regrets something they aborted,
Regrets they abstracted a wrong into more wrong.
Didn’t sing. Didn’t just sing the song.
Everyone has a conservative heart,
No matter how left wing, or how vocally they protest.
Everyone has a heart, at least. Everyone knows what is best.