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"Inauguration Day"
Click the arrow on the audio player to hear Frank Bidart read this poem. You can also download the recording or subscribe to Slate's Poetry Podcast on iTunes..
Today, despite what is dead
staring out across America I see since
Lincoln gunmen
nursing fantasies of purity betrayed,
dreaming to restore
the glories of their blood and state
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despite what is dead but lodged within us, hope
under the lustrous flooding moon
the White House is still
Whitman's White House, its
gorgeous front
full of reality, full of illusion
hope made wise by dread begins again
.