Thursday, August 8, 2024

50 Years Ago Today Richard Nixon Resigned- Poem from "Accents"

50 Years Ago Richard Nixon resigned- I saw it in Trier, West Germany. We convinced the owners of our favorite pub to say open at 2:30 a.m. so members of Sommerprogramm Georgetown could watch. It was worth it for them and for us.  I was starting graduate school at Georgetown University in DC then. I never finished, but that is another story.


In June 1974 I went to Georgetown to finalize arrangements for participating in the program. Through a Penn State friend in graduate school at George Washington University, I was invited to a party in his apartment building where David and Julie (Nixon) Eisenhower attended; I said hello to David, and Julie made the rounds to talk with everybody. 



The poem is from my thematically best-arranged book.




https://www.amazon.com/Accents-Arthur-Turfa/dp/1980326703



Trier, 1974

 

From atop the Porta Nigra

you gaze into the centuries;

into narrow streets where

Constantine and Karl Marx walked,

at graceful vineyards climbing the hills

that hold a blue, scattered-cloud sky

over the Moselle looping its way Rhineward.

 

Days spent confined at the Uni,

preparing for life on the Potomac,

smoothing access to labyrinths

it turned out I would never actually enter.

Evenings roaming the streets

roaring with laughter and lager,

long weekend crowded in Citroën 2cv

straining to and from Amsterdam.

 

Romance along the riverside or

as Nixon’s resignation crept into history

and we greeted rosy-fingered dawn.

Reconnecting for some years with others

as we settled into our roles different

from what we had imagined.

 

 

Decades later returning to find

the irony of all ironies: restored

amphitheater and baths, ancient items

abounding to be appreciated,

but my haunts long-absorbed

by covetous neighbors and the like

with no trace of their existence

except in my memories.

 

Every once in a while I meet

someone who knows the city,

and who from atop  the Porta Nigra

has also gazed into the centuries.

We share the glistening prize

nestled between the hills

and the Moselle flowing west.

 

From Accents ©2017, Kindle Desktop Publishing

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

2 comments:

  1. Such a wonderful window into a different time and to see how very little things really change. The truism of finding ourselves in roles we had not imagined, is placed perfectly within the context here. Such wonderful poetry.

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  2. The good thing was that Nixon stepped down and did not call for an insurrection. Our democracy held. Thanks for your comment. It was a wonderful summer. At the time I was going to attend Georgetown, get a Master's in something I did not love, and then go into the Federal bureaucracy. I decided against that a few months later; there's some poetry about all of that.

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