Audre Lorde Knows What I Mean – 2021 in review - 11. Epilogue

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A last plea from the last day of the year

I think of him there,

kicked out of the

Presidential Bed

By the late-come,

undocumented, First Lady.

Alone, exiled from the

third floor, from ‘wife’ and child,

he bedded in a second floor room

– all top secret, of course –

and no doubt he encountered

The White House’s most

famous, permanent resident.

Queens and Prime Ministers

have seen him; spoken to him.

Housemaids and footmen know

of his regular steps in the night,

the pacing with restlessness

for a job undone: the healing

of wounds; the righting of

racial wrongs; forgiveness.

So, what in the juvenile mind

of Donald Trump could he think

when Lincoln’s ghost appeared to him?

The Soul of our Nation, slaughtered

on the Union Altar of absolution,

materialized to deliver

a valuable lesson

to a loser-man like Trump?

I think of him there,

Singled out, exiled, on one of

his self-pitying evenings,

Totally alone in the world,

Sweating and nauseous,

Coked up yet again in his despair,

Confronted by true greatness.

And what more damning words

could America’s Shade

say to that quivering failure

of a human existence?

No more than what the national crisis

in the offing could have told him;

what the little boy in Donald Trump

has known all along, in every

situation where the adults are:

“You do not belong here!

You are unworthy of title,

Of respect, of even freedom.

You, sir, must go your way

And trouble a nation of troubles

No more. You let the Stars and Bars

Be raised over the People’s Congress,

For which there is no penance.

Be gone from this House.

Be gone from our cognizance.

Be outcast from Our memories

For ever and aye!” [i]