Lao Tzu, Thoreau and Dr. King
were jailed. But though they’re dead,
people still know and even sing
a lot of what they said.
King was killed. And Christ. And we
have made them holidays.
The others willed us poetry
to tell us of their ways.
Rosa Parks declined the seat
her driver said to take.
For Joan of Ark’s trailblazing feat
they did her at the stake.
They are not quite holidays
but have been canonized:
The future’s got a lot of ways
to see the past revised.
We hold the keys to our own star,
but not who’ll spin our story
in centuries, and if we are
deserving of our glory.
King and Lao-Tzu died gloriously;
but will the years be fair?
I wonder who they’ll make of me:
their jailer, or their heir?
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