I cannot recall where the prompt originated, but in either late 2016 or early 2017 I rewrote several classic poems to be about Donald Trump. I rediscovered them recently and could not think of a reason not to share them.
I don’t know that much more context is needed here. I would recommend reading the original poems before reading this reboots.
First, a re-imagining of “The Second Coming” by William Butler Yeats:
The Third Coming
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The eagle cannot hear the eagler;
Things fall apart; the party cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed pride is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The left lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of E Pluribus Unum
Troubles my sight: somewhere in lands of Florida,
A shape with lion’s rage and the hair of a dying man,
A gaze fierce and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its small hands, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant and angry.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That four years of carnage
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Washington to be born?
Thank you to Yeats for creating the original poem, which is certainly better than this rough beast. Next, with apologies to T. S. Eliot, a take on “The Journey of the Magi”:
The Journey of the Trumpi
A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For a journey, and such a long journey:
The worst! Awful!
Terrible, terrible time for a journey.
No one knew a journey could be so long.
A waste of time. Don’t go on that journey.I prefer the magi who didn’t go on journeys.
And finally, the line of e. e. cummings poetry that is entirely about our repugnant sitting president without needing to be changed a bit:
nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands
Thank you for reading. Let’s hope that the elections continue to trend as they did in November of 2017 and not November of 2016.