Balch Is Back

Shakespeare Serenades The President

Not enough poetry has been written about Donald Trump. Let’s begin to remedy that by inviting the Bard’s muse to re-work his well-known Sonnet 18.

This is the second in a planned series of commentaries channeling different writers. Future columns may again feature the Stratford man, while others will branch out, allowing voices from various centuries to comment on the unprecedented events of the twenty-first. A modern voice alone does not suffice in our tortured era.

For best effect, read boldly and with misty eye.

                                                                                                    — By Jeff Balch

Sonnet 18b (with apologies to Mr. Shakespeare)

Shall I compare thee to Obama’s way?

Thou seem’st his master as we gauge excitements:

His secretaries labor’d ev’ry day

Yet fail’d to pace thy multiple indictments.

The forty-fourth admix’d the white and black,

But never has thy gold complexion dimm’d;

His studied calm ne’er parried sharp attack:

Thou lov’st the barb, as briefings go unskimm’d.

The other’s pepper hair grows salty gray,

But thy bouffant its melon shan’t forsake,

Nor shall your foxes hold with those who say

‘Tis thee, not news of thee, we deem as fake:

 Now birth’d from shadow of a dark campaign,

 Thou dost not lead so much as entertain.