The Hill We Climb

John F. Kennedy war der erste amerikanische Präsident, der einen Dichter einlud, bei der Inauguration ein Gedicht zu sprechen. Der 86-jährige Robert Frost hatte ein Gedicht mit dem Titel Dedication geschrieben, kam aber über die ersten Zeilen nicht hinaus:

Summoning artists to participate

In the august occasions of the state
Seems something artists ought to celebrate.
Today is for my cause a day of days.
And his be poetry’s old-fashioned praise
Who was the first to think of such a thing.

Er hatte in der Eiseskälte Tränen in den Augen, die Sonne blendete ihn, da gab er es auf, das gerade geschriebene Gedicht vorzulesen und trug stattdessen sein Gedicht The Gift Outright vor, das konnte er auswendig:

The land was ours before we were the land's.
She was our land more than a hundred years
Before we were her people. She was ours
In Massachusetts, in Virginia,
But we were England's, still colonials,
Possessing what we still were unpossessed by,
Possessed by what we now no more possessed.
Something we were withholding made us weak
Until we found out that it was ourselves
We were withholding from our land of living,
And forthwith found salvation in surrender.
Such as we were we gave ourselves outright
(The deed of gift was many deeds of war)
To the land vaguely realizing westward,
But still unstoried, artless, unenhanced,
Such as she was, such as she would become.

Bei der Inauguration von Joe Biden wird Amanda Gorman ihr Gedicht The Hill We Climb vortragen, sie ist mit zweiundzwanzig Jahren die jüngste Dichterin bei einer solchen Zeremonie. Sie hatte ihr Gedicht noch nicht ganz fertig, als sie im Fernsehen die Ereignisse vom 6. Januar sah. Da schrieb sie ihr Gedicht zuende: And then on the Wednesday in which we saw the insurrection at the Capitol, that was the day that the poem really came to life. And I really put pedal to the metal. Und sie schrieb den Tag mit in ihr Gedicht hinein:

 

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.