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'The Hill We Climb': A poem we hear, a poem we read By Robert Galvin Mail Tribune Jan 22, 2021 12:00 AM A A I went to college in the town in which Emily Dickinson lived her entire life. On a gray, damp and chilly afternoon during the spring semester of my junior year, my English professor led the class on a pilgrimage to the poet’s gravesite — where we took turns reading Dickinson’s words to each other and the blackbirds overhead. I’d like to say it was a spiritual, transformative experience; but the truth is it was cold and wet and growing darker by the moment ... and one of our members already had earned his professor’s scorn by saying “Hey, Emily, how’s it shaking?” when the group reached her tombstone. I won’t be naming any names — besides, that was hardly as embarrassing as when the same student settled into a soft chair in a heated auditorium and promptly fell asleep as the Irish icon Seamus Heaney (who would later win the Nobel Prize) read of his love of the dark drop, the trapped sky, smells of waterweed, fungus and dank moss. I mean, it’s not as though our poor unfortunate hero was there as a guest of the daughter of the Yeats scholar who had invited Heaney to campus. Or that later, at the family’s house for dinner, he would be seated across from Heaney himself. That was a fun evening. If there is one thing I have come to believe, armed with such eclectic experiences (among others), is that the poem you read and the poem you hear are symbiotic twins — not exactly alike and yet of the same fertile spawning ground. Watching a repeat episode about the life of William Stafford on Southern Oregon PBS’s “Oregon Art Beat” recently, what hit home was the infusion of life as others read his works — the communal exerience of writer, reader and listener. In print, those same words inspire something more personal, more textural and intimate. Neither experience outshines the other. A stirring poem aloud brings theatricality and passion; read to oneself, it stirs just as deeply. I’ve had the good fortune to encounter such moments through the years; but rarely so memorably as during the inauguration of President Joe Biden this week, when 22-year-old Amanda Gorman took to the podium and read “The Hill We Climb.” It was a work filled with imagery and conviction, punctuated by rhyme schemes of her own device and read with a knowing well beyond her years. If you missed it live, it can be found at the usual internet suspects. In the meantime, I’m going to get out of the way, and let Miss Gorman’s words speak to you for themselves. 'The Hill We Climb' When day comes we ask ourselves, where can we find light in this never-ending shade? The loss we carry, a sea we must wade We’ve braved the belly of the beast We’ve learned that quiet isn’t always peace And the norms and notions of what just is Isn’t always just-ice And yet the dawn is ours before we knew it Somehow we do it Somehow we’ve weathered and witnessed a nation that isn’t broken but simply unfinished We the successors of a country and a time Where a skinny Black girl descended from slaves and raised by a single mother can dream of becoming president only to find herself reciting for one And yes we are far from polished far from pristine but that doesn’t mean we are striving to form a union that is perfect We are striving to forgea union with purpose To compose a country committed to all cultures, colors, characters and conditions of man And so we lift our gazes not to what stands between us but what stands before us We close the divide because we know, to put our future first, we must first put our differences aside We lay down our arms so we can reach out our arms to one another We seek harm to none and harmony for all Let the globe, if nothing else, say this is true: That even as we grieved, we grew That even as we hurt, we hoped That even as we tired, we tried That we’ll forever be tied together, victorious Not because we will never again know defeat but because we will never again sow division Scripture tells us to envision that everyone shall sit under their own vine and fig tree And no one shall make them afraid If we’re to live up to our own time Then victory won’t lie in the blade But in all the bridges we’ve made That is the promise to glade The hill we climb If only we dare It’s because being American is more than a pride we inherit, it’s the past we step into and how we repair it We’ve seen a force that would shatter our nation rather than share it Would destroy our country if it meant delaying democracy And this effort very nearly succeeded But while democracy can be periodically delayed it can never be permanently defeated In this truth in this faith we trust For while we have our eyes on the future history has its eyes on us This is the era of just redemption We feared at its inception We did not feel prepared to be the heirs of such a terrifying hour but within it we found the power to author a new chapter To offer hope and laughter to ourselves So while once we asked, how could we possibly prevail over catastrophe? Now we assert How could catastrophe possibly prevail over us? We will not march back to what was but move to what shall be A country that is bruised but whole, benevolent but bold, fierce and free We will not be turned around or interrupted by intimidation because we know our inaction and inertia will be the inheritance of the next generation Our blunders become their burdens But one thing is certain: If we merge mercy with might, and might with right, then love becomes our legacy and change our children’s birthright So let us leave behind a country better than the one we were left with Every breath from my bronze-pounded chest, we will raise this wounded world into a wondrous one We will rise from the gold-limbed hills of the west, we will rise from the windswept northeast where our forefathers first realized revolution We will rise from the lake-rimmed cities of the midwestern states, we will rise from the sunbaked south We will rebuild, reconcile and recover and every known nook of our nation and every corner called our country, our people diverse and beautiful will emerge, battered and beautiful When day comes we step out of the shade, aflame and unafraid The new dawn blooms as we free it For there is always light, if only we’re brave enough to see it If only we’re brave enough to be it Robert Galvin