Of The Empire

Englewood Review of Books just dropped this signal flare from Mary Oliver on us. I’m tempted to leave it here without comment. But I’m also suddenly wondering if it inspired, even a little, Ewan Roy’s speech near the end of the Succession series. Spoiler alert: It’s a good one.

James Cromwell is a remarkable man who performed “Waiting For Godot” in front of Fannie Lou Hamer. He shares that story and more in an exchange with Matt Zoller Seitz which can be taken in and processed here.

So anyway, I love what Mary Oliver set down for us in the above image, but the “We,” arguably, is doing too much work. It moves me deeply that she’d say “We,” even though she herself was living what I imagine was an exemplary life in Provincetown when she wrote those words. It moves me deeply that she’d see herself as, in some sense, implicated within the imperial project. I see myself implicated within it too.

But there is, I believe, that within me and Mary Oliver and you reading this that is not empire. May it be magnified. May we magnify it in ourselves and others in the days and the daze to come.

Thank you for tuning in.