This is the Hour of Lead

 

Emily Dickinson

    The first thing I did after the debate was check an Emily Dickinson poem that came to mind.
    Strange, I know. 
    Not the one about hope being the thing with feathers. Honestly, I felt no hope. "Trump won," I told my wife, before she fled the room, unable to watch the fiasco.
     I believed that. And yet when it was finally over, I felt ... oddly light. And not just because I no longer had to witness two elderly men flailing at one another, nor the current president gazing at the floor, as if in shame, letting the hateful maunderings of Cheetolini go unanswered. 

     There was a line I was looking for.
     "After great pain, a formal feeling comes—" begin Poem #341 — Dickinson gave titles to only a very few of her poems, written mostly for herself, folded into little bundles and wrapped in thread. The poem continues:

      The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs—
      The stiff Heart questions was it He, that bore,
      And Yesterday, or Centuries before?

     Not that I would describe what seeing Biden's awful show of age and infirmity as "great pain." That's overly-dramatic. Shock, and horror. How could it be a surprise? The Republicans have been saying as much for months. Who could imagine they'd be right? That something they said wasn't a lie. What else have been they saying that is true? Is Trump really a super-genius? He certainly shone, by comparison, at least in speaking ability. The toxic lies and hate, not so much. Then again, I turned the sound off for a while, unable to hear more.

          The Feet, mechanical go round—
          Of Ground, or Air, or Ought—
          A Wooden way
          Regardless grown,
          A Quartz contentment, like a stone—

     I was surprised how peaceful I felt. Not light-hearted, not happy. But not dismal and doomstruck either. A certain calm focus — "a formal feeling" is close — the kind of quiet clarity in an emergency situation, where you see what's unfolding in slow motion and know exactly what you have to do. "A Quartz contentment" almost nails it too.   

This is the Hour of Lead—
Remembered, if outlived,
As Freezing persons, recollect the Snow—
First—Chill—then Stupor—then the letting go—

   Does that explain the serenity?  The drown reflex? The way peace supposedly settles on those who stop thrashing and sink to the bottom? Or a person freezing to death? Had Biden thrown away his worsening chance between 8 p.m. and 8:03 p.m. CST, and now all that's left is the mechanical go round, as Trump lurches toward his return to the White House, and the nation slides into extremism and repression? Have the marshals of doom seized the nation, one at each elbow, to escort us to our richly earned punishment? Was the fate sealed in 180 seconds of live television, the dice thrown, the ball settling into the roulette wheel cup and croupier chance sniggers and scrapes our life's savings off the table?
    Maybe. But you know what? I don't care. Because I don't plan to surrender. Not until the last second of the clock plays out and then after the game ends. Once the shock wears off. I plan to oppose Trump with every fiber of my being, and if that means backing a decent man who had a bad night, so be it. Biden seemed to recover himself Friday, and gave a good speech in North Carolina. Counter-intuitive things happen. Maybe Biden's near political death experience will  mobilize support in a way it never would before, that for each person who doesn't vote because his face was slack and confused, two more will head to the polls because the alternative is still so much worse. You could put Joe Biden in a wood chipper and what spewed out the other side wouldn't be pretty, but it wouldn't be a liar, bully, fraud and traitor either.  If they dragged Joe Biden's corpse to campaign events and stood it up behind a podium and Kamala Harris worked his lips while giving a speech out of the corner of her mouth, a real life "Weekend at Bernie's," I'd still vote for Biden. He might be raspy, but he isn't Vladimir Putin's catspaw.
     A couple hours after the debate, my wife and I walked our dog through the lovely little downtown park in Northbrook. Another beautiful summer night. I wasn't angry or upset or scared. I felt focused. The Hour of Lead had already passed, and now I was responding to the crisis, in the zone. The tide of battle turned, for the moment. It sure looked like a rout. And some have already throw down their muskets and bolted for the trees. Yet others are still in the field, standing firm, ready to take what's coming. 
      When I'm low, I often turn to my hero, Samuel Johnson, the great English lexicographer. He was a man beset with problems — gouty, with faulty eyesight, hard of hearing, scrofulous, ugly, alcoholic, depressed. And yet possessed with an iron will. Facing his final illness, he said something worth remembering. "I will be conquered," Johnson vowed. "I will not capitulate." That sounds like a plan.