“Three Generations of Imbeciles Are Enough,” “Sneer–Part 1,” and “Stay Through the Summer”

A polymath-in-waiting; Sir Francis Galton,

Proffered the ungainly theory of Eugenics.

That was 1883 in his now infamous book,

“Inquiries into Human Fertility and it’s Development”.

Galton, a cousin of Charles Darwin,

Was knighted by King Edward VII for scientific contributions,

Including the brutal and debasing Theory of Eugenics,

Which law, introduced in the U.S. in Indiana in 1907.

The master-race had been singled out, neatly.

Through the years and several Supreme Court cases

The laws invigorating the propagation of eugenics flourished,

Diminished, held a place in jurisprudence

That survives, at least on paper, until now.

The highly educated segment of the population,

Too often the wealthy and so-called elite classes

Easily convince the uneducated population

Of their higher intellectual prowess,

Often mandated in statutes and precedence,

To deliver bone-headed stupidity with

Pitch-perfect regularity.

And then in 1907 along came Indiana.

The rest is history, until

Mr. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., who

In 1927 announced to a pensively waiting world that:

“Three generations of imbeciles are enough”.

Buck v. Bell still stands, tall,

Hidden in shuffled papers.

Phillis Wheatley, the first black U.S. published poet,

Adjudicated by Thomas Jefferson thusly:

“The compositions published under her name

are below the dignity of criticism”.

Jefferson read the classics.

Gorged on Homer, Virgil, Dryden and Milton,

Groused about belligerent contemporary poets,

Valued their work mostly as naught,

And continued enslaving ignorant souls

Who wrought their lives outdoors, not in.

Phillis, born into enslavement and treachery,

Restrained, clutched squeaky clean facial expressions.

She, nonetheless, held truth within her released soul

That made grown men weep or quietly breath misogynoir,

Fled to destinations far beyond the hallowed shores of religiosity

Where Homer’s bardic journeys into epic recitations

Still sprint above the radar of excellence,

Whilst Phyllis, in her own words, crawls beneath –

“I mourn health deny’d”.

Those were turbulent and deceptively hewn years,

Molded with artifice of home-grown misdeeds

Until the poet and the poetry were driven from the shore

Without a lifeboat, or off-ramp,

Or any means to smile or survive

In a growing belligerent swell of grim, humorless

Eternal holy matrimony.

So I can face the winter

With all my baggage,

My poverty and my warmth.

Stay through the summer

To fetch the firewood,

That my bunk may hold my teeth.

Stay through the summer

To watch the geese fly south.

So their wings shall envelope our meet.

Stay through the summer

Until the mountains turn brown

That our feet will swallow the clown.

Stay through the summer

I’m begging you, please,

That some god will return,

And our soiled sheets

Will prepare us

For the Third Holy Temple,

Savagely bespoken for us,

Long ago.

Beneath timelessness.

I’m just out of practice,

I’ve been gone so long.