As her campaign suffers another blow, here's a secret song Hillary Clinton might adapt from T.S. Eliot


Bad to verse: Hillary Rodham Clinton has some explaining to do.
The Love Song of H. Rodham Clinton


Let us go then, you and I
When the campaign is spread out against the sky
Like a spreadsheet analyzed upon a table;
Let us go through certain half-deserved defeats,
Past Donald’s hostile, muttering tweets,
The restless nights in top-flight steep hotels
Looking at crucial polls that toll like bells
In meetings full of tedious argument,
Our aides intent
On leading us to an overwhelming question…
A campaign stop. Where is it?
No matter — time to visit.

In the rooms the media come and go
Talking of the Hillary they wish to know.

Like yellow fog, the gossip curls around my long career,
The yellow smoke that curls and rubs its stubble against my long career,
Bringing up Whitewater, the death of Vince Foster, Bill’s straying,
Suggestions that my place was in the kitchen, baking cookies,
Finally, that private server, well past regret or praying.
  
In the rooms the media come and go:
We must keep going high, when they go low.

And indeed there will be time
To wonder, “Am I clear?” and “Am I clear?”
Time to explain as I’ve done for a year,
Time to explain again the mess I’m in
(They’ll say, “How her defense is growing thin!”)
Do I dare perturb the media universe?
In a press conference there is time
For decisions and revisions one news cycle will reverse.

No! I’m not Obama, nor was meant to be,
I cannot work a room like Bill and get its love:
It’s evident to all I feel above
The fray, which makes me quite the fool
When Comey brings me down, and Weiner’s tool
Snakes its way again onto my scene.

Shall I change my hair again? Do I dare to give a speech?
I will wear new pantsuits, and step into the breach
Of mistrust, only to see my desperate greatness flicker
As Breitbart and Fox News still mock and snicker.

It is impossible to say just what I mean:
My life attracts the trolls in comment threads on every screen.
Each lofty thought trips on some ragged clause
Scuttling across the floors of destiny.

I grow old…I grow old…
I shall keep the bottoms of my speeches bold.

I have lingered in loud chambers, still at sea
Tacking left and earning Wall Street’s frown
Till Huma’s e-mails shake us and we drown.

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