This next poem is an address to reason.
Reason used to be in good status,
but since the romantic poets, it's
often attacked as being partial bloodless inhuman.
But it only takes listening to a few debates
on television during election cycle
to realize it's a very precious and rare commodity,
and it should be venerated.
"To reason-- you don't deserve to be
blamed for the wrongs done in your name
anymore than God or country ought to be blamed,
or peace or freedom.
You deserve to be praised for bringing
to all who serve you sincerely the truth beyond the senses.
For you, it's obvious that the hungry of Madagascar
are just as needy as the hungry at home.
And when the issues are local, you're
the one determined to give all sides a hearing.
It's you that the public meeting about the wisdom of damming
the river who were open both to the call of cities
downriver for flood protection and to the protest
the villages that may soon be turned into lake bed.
And as you deliberate, you don't assume
that the needs of the many trump the rights
of the few, that justice is simply a matter of numbers.
You don't assume the village plan for the dispossessed
on higher ground is superior to the old
because it's brick, not clapboard with wider streets.
New and old, grand and modest--
these are the same before your law.
If Paris is on your list of places worth visiting,
so is a small provincial town of Arles, home of a Roman theater
that's still standing.
For you, an ancient place, just as likely as one
written this morning to be relevant.
Though its message may need more deciphering,
you may not be sure what's implied
when the hero in serving one God runs afoul of another
just as imposing.
You may not be sure what it meant to its earliest audience,
but you resist assuming the question can't be answered.
Let's see, you say, if under different names
two truths we honor are in contention,
and only one can be lived today."