A
Mild-Spoken Citizan Finally Writes to the
White
House
by
William Meredith
Please
read this letter when you are alone.
Don't
be afraid to listen to what may change you.
I
am urging on you only what I myself have done.
Int
he first place, I respect the office, although one night
last
spring, when you had committed (in my eyes)
criminal
folly, and there was a toast to you, I wouldn't rise.
A
man's mistakes (if I may lecture you), his worst acts,
aren't
out of character, as he'd like to think,
are
not put on him by power or stress or too much to drink,
but
are simply a worse self he consents to be. Thus
there
is no mistaking you. I marvel that there's
so
much disrespect for a man just being himself, being his errors.
'I
never met a worse man than myself'
Thoreau
said. When we're our best selves, we can all
afford
to say that. Self-respect is vest when marginal.
And
when the office of the presidency will again
accommodate
that remark, it may be held by better men
than
you or me. Meantime I hear there is music in your house,
your
women wear queens' wear, though winds howl outside,
and
I say, that's all right, the man should have some ease,
but
does anyone say to your face who you really are"
No,
they say Mr. President, while any young person
feels
free to call me voter, believer, even causer.
And
if I were also a pray-er, a man given to praying,
(I'm
often in fact careless about great things, like you)
and
I wanted to pray for your office, as in fact I do,
the
words that would come to me would more likely be
god
change you than god bless the presidency.
I
would pray, God cause the President to change.
As
I myself have been changed, first my head, then my heart,
so
that I no longer pretend that I don't swindle or kill
when
there is swindling and killing on my nation's part.
Well.
Go out into your upstairs hall tonight with this letter.
Generous
ghosts must walk that house at night,
carrying
draughts of the Republic like cold water
to
a man parched after too much talk and wine and smoke.
Hear
them. They are elected ghosts, though some wil be radicals
and
all may want to tell you things you will not like.
It
will seem dark in the carpeted hall, despite the nightlights
in
the dull sconces. Make the guard let you pass.
'If
you are the President,' a shade with a water glass
will
ask you (and this is all I ask), calling you by name,
himself
perhaps a famous name, 'If you are the President
and
things in the land have come to all this shame,
why
don't you try doing something new? This building rose
laborious
as a dream, to house one character:
man
trusting man anew. That's who each tenant is
--
or an imposter, as some of us have been.'
1969
