On the Steps of the Jefferson Memorial

The simplest poems can be amongst the most profound.

On the Steps of the Jefferson Memorial

We invent our gods

the way the Greeks did,

in our own image—but magnified.

Athena, the very mother of wisdom,

squabbled with Poseidon

like any human sibling

until their furious tempers

made the sea writhe.

Zeus wore a crown

of lightning bolts one minute,

a cloak of feathers the next,

as driven by earthly lust

he prepared to swoop

down on Leda.

Despite their power,

frailty ran through them

like the darker veins

in the marble of these temples

we call monuments.

Looking at Jefferson now,

I think of the language

he left for us to live by.

I think of the slave

in the kitchen downstairs.

by Linda Pastan

So we place our heroes on pedestals and then discover that, like the Greek gods on Mount Olympus, they are not perfect. Like marble with its veined colorations, people are not purely one thing. They are shot through with human weakness large and small, full of contradictions and moral failings.

Prominent on the interior frieze below the dome of the Jefferson memorial are his words from an 1800 letter defending the constitutional refusal to recognize a state religion.

I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.

The context makes it clear that the kind of tyranny Jefferson feared most was religious tyranny. Absent from this statement is any indication that he objected to the ultimate tyranny – that of slavery. He noted that slavery diminished both master and slave but he was unable to call for equality. That was best left, he said, to God.

For the eradication of slavery we must await with patience the workings of an overruling Providence..

So Jefferson – the great liberator, egalitarian and crafter of the Declaration of Independence – had a morally blind definition of man. His wealth, power and prestige were – literally – built on the backs of others.