Poetic license: Telling the truth in verse

I know this will surprise you, but I don’t read much poetry, and I don’t ever write it for the column. The Gazette would probably revoke my guest privileges.

In high school, I thought that iambic pentameter was a social disease that penicillin couldn’t cure. But I did read a poem recently with no bad effects. A reader-become-friend sent me a poem I want to share with you. It was written by an American poet, essayist, artist, and social activist, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, who died at almost 102 in 2017, not long after Donald Trump was sworn in as president.

The poem is titled, “Pity the Nation.” Here it is:

Pity the nation whose people are sheep

And whose shepherds mislead them.

Pity the nation whose leaders are liars

Whose sages are silenced

And whose bigots haunt the airwaves.

Pity the nation that raises not its voice

Except to praise conquerors

And acclaim the bully as hero.

And aims to rule the world

By force and by torture.

Pity the nation that knows

No other language but its own

And no other culture but its own.

Pity the nation whose breath is money

And sleeps the sleep of the too well fed.

Pity the nation oh pity the people

who allow their rights to erode

and their freedoms to be washed away.

My country, tears of thee

Sweet land of liberty!

I don’t know if this is good poetry. I do know that it is a brilliant description of a Trump-led nation.

If Trump were to become president again, Ferlinghetti would go from poet to prophet. We would have a world of misery on steroids, where school lunches are denied while the well-fed get fatter, where our leader doesn’t mind an occasional insurrection.

We will need all that pity if Trump does win and the House remains in the hands of bullies, liars, and the well-fed. I don’t think it is excessive to approach this Election Day with fear and loathing. Trump and the millions of voters who support him frighten me.

Ferlinghetti has highlighted many of my fears — some have already come true — and things will get worse if Trump wins another term. Mitch McConnell, who obviously can’t stand Trump, endorsed him this past week. I hope decent Republicans don’t follow his lead. I’d like to see Chuck Grassley among them.

It seems unlikely to me that those who don’t want a pitiful country will speak out at their convention. But we can hope that Nikki Haley will join with Liz Cheney, Mitt Romney, Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins to refuse to vote for Trump when the roll is called, along with a significant percentage of the delegates. They would be targets of Trump’s anger — ensuring that Donald, in his ‘‘get even’’ mode makes a venomous acceptance speech that keeps some Republicans home on Election Day or maybe drives them to vote for Joe Biden.

Norman Sherman of Coralville has worked extensively in politics, including as Vice President Hubert Humphrey’s press secretary, and authored a memoir “From Nowhere to Somewhere.”