What

March 16, 2021 | Posted by Peter Jakobsen | PETER'S WRITING, POLITICS, Ulalume | 0 Comments |

(with apologies to Rudyard Kipling)

What can you keep when everyone around you
    Is hysterical and blaming all on you,
“What the dickens,” is the way they sound you
    Out, and stipulate the new taboo;
What the devil is the endless queuing,
    The waiting by the door we see, surprised,
What went down when everyone was booing,
    When emerged one, no longer disguised:
                             —
What you dream you are is often vaster;
    Than the actual world and all that’s real;
What you wish against is the disaster
   Of your thinking overbearing how you feel;
What you bear to hear your truth be spoken
    Is for the formulation of new rules,
What you want is not to be a token,
    Or on the margin once the passion cools:
                             —
What was a mighty heap of all your sinnings
    And parts of you that needed to be lost,
What extraneous labels led back to beginnings
   In the cleansing furnace where Rosebud was tossed;
If you can force your brain and nerve and sinew
   To serve your turn long after they are gone,   
And identify when there is nothing in you
    Except the will which says to them: ‘Dream on!’
                             —
What can you say to people, absent virtue, 
 
    When they cannot bear to look or touch,
What sacred facts perennially hurt you,
    If opinions fly beyond your desperate clutch;
What price now the unforgiving minute
    With everyone prepared to read you wrong,
Have the earth and everything that’s in it,
    But you’ll never ‘scape the judgment of the throng!
What Does India's Transgender Community Want? – The Diplomat

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