Ann Davis-Rowe

Democracy will not come
Today, this year
Nor ever
Through compromise and fear.

— Langston Hughes, “Democracy”

I somehow recently ended up on the mailing list of the Mellon Foundation, and they recently re-shared a story from 2021 about the 25th anniversary of National Poetry Month. In it, they had three contemporary poets read historical poems, and these readings were accompanied with a video of visual art.

I haven’t been able to stop about two of the poems that were shared and how sadly relevant they are now, decades removed from their writing. So, for the end of the 29th National Poetry Month, I’m sharing the words of folks much smarter and more eloquent than I.

“Democracy” by Langston Hughes

“I lived in the first century of world wars” by Muriel Rukeyser