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MARCO WERMAN: Yesterday we heard some poetic thoughts from Hungary addressed to our President-elect. Here's the next installment in our series.
MATTHIAS GÖRITZ: Matthias Göritz, poet and novelist from Hamburg, Germany. A poem for the inauguration of President Obama, and I wish you lots of time and good luck.
"They've wrapped you up with their pound notes, their courtly documents, those feel-good hormones of the 'momentarily fashionable' while next door on Haymarket already a new
opera is being staged: the beggars - Not one written by you
Once more you dive into violins and contrabassoons (Music!), the individual hues of woodwinds and brass, rising up skywards, no: riverwards promising salvation as though you were painting some other landscape
Had we had but a moment's time to fathom this world what a feast we'd have had what a culmination. It would have raised us up in the beginning, forever.
WERMAN: That's part of "Dream Text, Handel," by the German poet Matthias Göritz. You can read the whole poem at theworld.org. We'll hear inaugural thoughts from a Kenyan poet next week on The World.
transcript
'Dream Text, Handel' and other inauguration poems