(Double Two-Fingered Victory): The Reflection of Richard Nixon
- (Double Two-Fingered Victory): The Reelection of Richard Nixon
Here’s the poet arriving late On his way somewhere a morning after. He has another date for you: 8 November 72. Here he is trying to fill his need and yours By mixing politics and fear Out of the watery sod.
He wants you to note what Tuesday it was last night. By now the way your country begins its days Is old to him. More important are his sons And should be to you Except for the twins he calls fear And hate you ran in the late campaign.
They did you usual. You drown In dumbness. They will never warn you How tricky the gates work In time to stop the flood. Here’s the poet Driving to school the morning after, late Getting there, too, almost to 40 sideways
Still going, today not sure of anywhere much, So full of the latest messages from the Capitol. For him and his sons the law is out of order still. He can’t laugh now but recalls the issues His sons helped make the day before. He comforts himself with contempt
That the mere idea of a block, a bus, a room A school full of little niggers Can fill your lives with terror. His only fear is that you won’t know You got what you deserve. Here’s the poet driving to Chapel Hill [End Page 307]
(How that place bells in his eyes!) Noting how little change has been made. He’s glad it’s November for the sound of it, But the Fall sky looks the same. No outrage There. No deus no ex no machina. Not even impatience. The sky goes on. The trees, too.
He is driving through a tunnel of them in the November Aftermorning so blue so white and cold Trees are shitting leaves in red In brown in gold about his head, less in fear Than resignation. As if to agree with you There is nothing yet new under this sun.
Nothing changes for us except the signs: Cross, sword, ship, whip, $, Now your dumb double two-fingered victory.
Gerald Barrax was Professor of English, Poet-in-Residence, and Editor of Obsidian at North Carolina State University at Raleigh. He is author of four volumes of poems, Another Kind of Rain, An Audience of One, The Deaths of Animals and Lesser Gods, and Leaning Against the Sun. In July, 1997, From a Person Sitting in Darkness: Selected and New Poems, his fifth volume, was published by the Louisiana State University Press. He has recently retired to West Chester, Pennsylvania.
