Kaiwen Tao

PIECE OF PEACE: THE HILL WE CLIMB

THE YOUTH POET LAUREATE LIT UP THE INAUGURATION STAGE AND ILLUMINATED JOY’S GREATEST PROMISE.

KEYS SOULCARE

“The new dawn blooms as we free it
For there is always light,
if only we’re brave enough to see it
If only we’re brave enough to be it…”
— The Hill We Climb, by Amanda Gorman

To witness Amanda Gorman’s Inauguration Day reading was to watch a young woman standing in her power: Purposeful. Present. Electric. Gorman’s words recognized love as a more worthwhile legacy than vengeance, and envisioned our nation’s potential path forward. To imagine a future with hope, healing, and shared humanity in our current reality of ongoing injustice, hypocrisy, and hurt was a gift on display — and a gift to everyone who heard her. As we step into Black History Month, it’s lightworkers and moments like these that inspire us most — and embolden us to keep seeing and living life through Gorman’s eyes.

What ideals are you moving from simply “seeing” to “being” this season? Share your visions in the comments!

Read Amanda Gorman’s Inauguration Poem, ‘The Hill We Climb’

By Brittany Martin -January 20, 2021

Poet Amanda Gorman delivered an inauguration poem from the steps of the United States Capitol which powerfully captured the national mood. Titled “The Hill We Climb,” the piece was written specifically for the occasion. “In my poem, I’m not going to in any way gloss over what we’ve seen over the past few weeks and, dare I say, the past few years. But what I really aspire to do in the poem is to be able to use my words to envision a way in which our country can still come together and can still heal,” Gorman told The New York Times. “It’s doing that in a way that is not erasing or neglecting the harsh truths I think America needs to reconcile with.” Now 22-years-old, West L.A.-raised Gorman was named Youth Poet Laureate of Los Angeles at the age of 16. At 19, while in college at Harvard, she was named the first-ever National Youth Poet Laureate. She was contacted in late December about appearing at the Inauguration. While she had never previously met with anyone from the incoming president’s team, now-First Lady Jill Biden recalled seeing a reading Gorman had delivered at the Library of Congress, and suggested her for the ceremony. “The theme for the inauguration in its entirety is ‘America United,’ so when I heard that was their vision, that made it very easy for me to say, great, that’s also what I wanted to write about in my poem, about America united, about a new chapter in our country,” told the Times. “There is space for grief and horror and hope and unity, and I also hope that there is a breath for joy in the poem, because I do think we have a lot to celebrate at this inauguration.” Poets have appeared at the inaugurations of just four U.S. presidents. Maya Angelou, Robert Frost, Miller Williams, Elizabeth Alexander, and Richard Blanco, have filled the role before Gorman. This September, Viking Books is set to publish Gorman’s first poetry collection. That book, aimed particularly at teenage and young adult readers, will contain today’s inauguration poem. That is one of two book projects currently in the works for the young poet.

When day comes we ask ourselves, where can we find light in this never-ending shade? The loss we carry, a sea we must wade. We’ve braved the belly of the beast, we’ve learned that quiet isn’t always peace and the norms and notions of what just is, isn’t always justice. And yet the dawn is ours before we knew it, somehow we do it, somehow we’ve weathered and witnessed a nation that isn’t broken but simply unfinished. We, the successors of a country and a time where a skinny black girl descended from slaves and raised by a single mother can dream of becoming president only to find herself reciting for one. And, yes, we are far from polished, far from pristine, but that doesn’t mean we are striving to form a union that is perfect, we are striving to forge a union with purpose, to compose a country committed to all cultures, colors, characters and conditions of man. So we lift our gazes not to what stands between us, but what stands before us. We close the divide because we know to put our future first, we must first put our differences aside. We lay down our arms so we can reach out our arms to one another, we seek harm to none and harmony for all. Let the globe, if nothing else, say this is true: that even as we grieved, we grew, even as we hurt, we hoped, that even as we tired, we tried, that we’ll forever be tied together victorious, not because we will never again know defeat but because we will never again sow division. Scripture tells us to envision that everyone shall sit under their own vine and fig tree and no one should make them afraid. If we’re to live up to our own time, then victory won’t lie in the blade, but in in all of the bridges we’ve made. That is the promise to glade, the hill we climb if only we dare it because being American is more than a pride we inherit, it’s the past we step into and how we repair it. We’ve seen a force that would shatter our nation rather than share it. That would destroy our country if it meant delaying democracy, and this effort very nearly succeeded. But while democracy can periodically be delayed, but it can never be permanently defeated. In this truth, in this faith, we trust, for while we have our eyes on the future, history has its eyes on us, this is the era of just redemption we feared in its inception we did not feel prepared to be the heirs of such a terrifying hour but within it we found the power to author a new chapter, to offer hope and laughter to ourselves, so while once we asked how can we possibly prevail over catastrophe, now we assert how could catastrophe possibly prevail over us. We will not march back to what was but move to what shall be, a country that is bruised but whole, benevolent but bold, fierce and free, we will not be turned around or interrupted by intimidation because we know our inaction and inertia will be the inheritance of the next generation, our blunders become their burden. But one thing is certain: if we merge mercy with might and might with right, then love becomes our legacy and change our children’s birthright. So let us leave behind a country better than the one we were left, with every breath from my bronze, pounded chest, we will raise this wounded world into a wondrous one, we will rise from the golden hills of the West, we will rise from the windswept Northeast where our forefathers first realized revolution, we will rise from the lake-rimmed cities of the Midwestern states, we will rise from the sunbaked South, we will rebuild, reconcile, and recover in every known nook of our nation in every corner called our country our people diverse and beautiful will emerge battered and beautiful, when the day comes we step out of the shade aflame and unafraid, the new dawn blooms as we free it, for there is always light if only we’re brave enough to see it, if only we’re brave enough to be it.