INAUGURATION

INAUGURATION

I have no words
to compete
with rain
or sunlight,

or the brush
of your hair
on my brow.
I am humbled

before beauty
and this chance
to lead a nation
out of delusion

with self and others;
but I remain unelected,
acknowledged only
by a few readers

of psychosis,
the notion that word
becomes flesh,
we accept by rote,

at Mass,
a divine mystery,
but ignore the man
on a soapbox

who reads his ya yahs
out at the Bowery
Poetry Café
on Sunday morning

at 9 am during
a marathon reading
to welcome the year,
to say, World,

you’ve still got poets
to kick around. Bring
on the go-go girls,
mountebanks, acrobats.

The show is everything.
Let’s say hurrah for all
that jazz. The inauguration
will be like no other.

Time moves the chariot
up Pennsylvania Avenue.
Get your dreams on board,
children well strapped, save

room for seedlings in pots,
germs, a fish tank; ‘though
this is no ark, here hope
will take root or expire.

Indran Amirthanayagam c) 2009