You may have seen this poem already. Back in August, Fight Laugh Feast magazine asked me for a poem to fit an issue themed on God’s sovereignty and Christian “preparedness”, so I submitted this and unpublished it from this Substack.
I encourage you to check out the work of CrossPolitic (mostly political, as you might imagine, but also home to poet and rhetor
), and perhaps subscribe to the magazine.Dragon Land ended up being published right around the time of Trump’s election, which makes it richer, I think. There’s an image in the poem directly inspired by one of Joe Biden’s public moments of forgetfulness.
I won’t go to much into the origins of the poem, as you should buy the magazine issue for that, but I will mention that it began as a meditation on Mercedes Sosa’s song ¿Será posible el Sur?, or Can the south be possible?, which is about the identity of people and land in Argentina and the southern cone of South America. The opening lines of her song are similar to mine: can the south be possible? so many spent rounds to the heart of the people. So many mothers stuck in a crazy word, all memory stuck in a jail cell.
The key question she asks is, “If we could see ourselves in a mirror, would we recognize what we saw?” I ask this question of Christendom.
That said, as a certified socialist, I’m sure Sosa would hate my poem.
I’d like to dedicate this poem to my friend Nick of
.Dragon Land Mi territorio que una vez gira en la oscuridad de esa pregunta. ¿Será posible el sur? Si se viese al espejo, ¿se reconocería? - Mercedes Sosa Can Christendom be possible? So many spent rounds falling from the people’s hearts, so many mothers immersed in cracked social crazes. All our memory is caught in a forgotten wire cage. Can Christendom be possible? The pulpit’s pounded brimstone gives way to pride and palaver, our old men sleep sleeps and wander past lecterns. All our words are caught in the groat. We are ruled by lenders. My territory! All our combines are ground halt and limping to market, our fathers as trusted as treaties. Quis custodiet acervum? Our earths are scourged and blooded, flooded with soil and wind. My land! Who is minding the storehouse, who keeping the mead hall?
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Thank you for this kindness, Joffre; you have provoked me to do better in my poetry for the glory of Christ.