.These Five Against Us All

In the middle of the night these five slipped away


from the four who would not hear it anymore.


Five in Washington after two days of faking it


donned black sheets, began making it


Official: Bush won.


They'd "deliberated".


The country now was liberated


from any doubt. There was nothing


more to worry about.



Five, as they'd never done before


left a note and not the spoken explanation,


went out the garage door to escape the nation.



Five under the cover of darkness


and integrity


decided "Republic" meant Republican,


though conflicts of interest they hadn't disclosed


hadn't pre-empted the candidate they chose,


and outside journalists reported it was Bush by a nose.



Bush by 5 to 4, The United States Supreme Court said.


The closest margin of victory ever --


numbers you can keep in your head.



For each of the five the decision was anonymous


(however that was),


though round robin one and all they disregarded


the votes of those denied the vote,


and all the votes that got discarded,



-- to protect, they said, the human rights of those who got a vote instead;


to protect, they didn't say,


the few votes that put George Bush ahead,


Katherine Harris said.



Five, who had worked for the party before,


some for Bush in business or in law,


five in a league we know


ignored the ballot designed to confuse


(though thousands brought that news);



these five Republicans in black,


with no guns put to their backs


ignored the votes not counted by those voting machines,


placed by Jeb in Democratic wards,


and all the votes denied by human beings.



These five yelled Stop! to the recount going on,


and acting as the whole United States Supreme Court,


which had never interfered in elections before,


these five interfered and made it law:


Bush won.



These five politicians on the right


in the middle of the Washington night


in a room near the back door


would not hear the protest of black Americans stopped outside the polls,


or stricken, curiously, from the voting rolls;



these five ignored those who in their thousands would have voted Gore,


as would have thousands more denied the vote, or more ...



These five ignored "irregularities",


disenfranchisement and the crime of fraud,


ignored the physical violence,


led by one from Bush's staff,


who'd also stopped a re-count


as Jeb's cops somewhere laughed.



And as the time had come


For the winner to be declared


(the time there'd been had gone to hearing


their excuses shared),


these five ignored the four who saw it quite another way,


but as the system of counting votes WAS unreliable, they could say --


mistakes were undeniable --


The Florida system could not be used.



Democracy had not been abused.



These five in the middle of the night in Washington declared


as no majority of one had ever done


that their personal preference for president won.


Each one of these five, who held the edge and all the power,


changed the future in the final hour,


and left by the garage door,


left a lie Republicans endure,


a truth all of us abhor.



Dale Reynolds


March 2001


London