Reformatted version of She Holds These Truths

[Larry Robinson]

My previous post of this poem unfortunately garbled the format.

This is what it should look like:

She Holds These Truths

Throngs of mourners gather below the 
forty-four steps that ascend to a portico encircled by
Corinthian columns, each of the sixteen a reminder
of the beauty and dignity of this place
where Justice lies in repose before the Great Hall.

Gazing upward they see “Equal Justice Under Law”
etched over the doors that open to the high court 
and what once was her seat, now shrouded in black
her opinions in majority and dissent echoing
through the lives and livelihoods of we the people. 

She battled the patriarchs of bias and bigotry
with the sword of reason and the power of words to
wage a quiet revolution and reform a nation 
called to uphold freedom’s guarantee of 
life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. 

They come to be near so bright a star
her light cast across the lives of
women, young and old, who know what
she has given to fight for the rights and
responsibilities that liberty, not time, guarantees.

Gratitude and grief resound throughout
a country dying for a more perfect union 
the sanctity of the Constitution in peril, 
perhaps lost without the notorious one 
a servant of the law and her oath.

When the crowds return home and the
last candle is extinguished, the verses
of Amazing Grace withered by the wind
generations to come will hear the whisper
of a Justice’s voice that once set them free.


			L.L. Stamps


Ruth Bader Ginsburg
   (1933-2020)