Elysian Fields

The political climate today is not good, we seem to have political conflict whenever we turn to the media to hear what is in the news.  Sometimes I wonder and yearn for past days when it seemed that our politicians were more interested in statecraft than in promoting their own agenda in order to achieve re-election.  During one particularly contentious time both Political and Economic, I was visiting my daughter and her family in Chicago, as per my habit I got up early before dawn and thinking about things I grabbed a scrap of paper and wrote this poem.  My poetry like Longfellow and Byron is often sprinkled with Greek.

   Ἠλύσια πεδία            

Ἐλπὶς ἐν ἀνθρώποις μούνη θεὸς ἐσθλὴ ἔνεστιν.

                         Where are the souls of those who are righteous.

                         Why have they not remained yet here with us

                         to redeem us from the current tyranny

                         of financial princes who forever

                         have that insipid power over our lives?

                         They say there is no such thing as money

                         it is merely the medium of exchange.

                         Those of us who must now serve those princes,

                         Know that thesis far too well; don't we all?

                         They should tell us something that we don't know!

                          Is not the just city state one in which

                          the weak are protected and culture prevails?

                          Don't the weak have a role in that city,

                          set on  a hill where its light shines for all?

                          Can we just pretend it does for a while?

                          I think about these things in the morning

                          hours before the light appears o'er the lake.

                          Perhaps I'm wrong to do so, for I'm told

                         "Don't think about it, do, you're not paid to think!"

                          Ah, but there's the rub. I 'm no longer paid.

                           So, perhaps I should think, someone ought to,

                           Think about what is right and why it's wrong?

                           So that at the very least we can find

                           a just solution to that which plagues us,

                           and we become a New Jerusalem.

                                                    Give back those souls Elysium that we may

                            learn of them the ways of righteousness

                            and bring about hope of which Theognis wrote.

                            We need it now more than ever before.

                            For we are weak and need their protection.