Inspiration for the following Whitmanesque take on the current budget struggle goes to the speech of Emmy Award winning “Sex In the City” actress Cynthia Nixon at the Monday press conference of the Keep The Promises coalition. “The Campaign for Fiscal Equity lawsuit was a grueling 14-year battle to win for all the children of New York City the ‘sound basic education’ to which they are entitled,” said Nixon, a parent of a student attending PS 87 in Manhattan and a spokesperson for the Alliance for Quality Education. “But now, at our moment of victory as the state digs deep into its pockets to begin the task of reversing decades of under-funding and neglect, the city has taken its cue to cut and run. At a time when we should be uniting with the state’s armada, our Captain Bloomberg and First Mate Klein have jumped ship and left 1.1 million school children on deck, fighting over an insufficient number of life preservers.”
O Captain! my Captain! Your fearful budget is spun;
The ship is spouting leaks, the hopes you raised are done;
The shoals are near, the cries I hear, the people all despairing,
In dark of night Tweed steals from the vessel grim and sparing:
Where is your heart?
Does it still bleed red?
We’re on the deck my Captain has fled,
Full of cold and dread.
O Captain! my Captain! Return and steer the ship;
Return – for you the flag is flung – for you the bugle trills;
For you the speeches and honors – for you the schools a-crowding;
For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;
Here Captain! dear Chancellor!
Our arms beneath your spine;
It must be a dream that on the deck,
You’ve left the children and fled.
My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still;
My Chancellor does not feel our pain, he has no heart nor will;
The ship is failing fast, its voyage failing and done;
This fearful trip, the sinking ship, goes down as one;
Cry out, O shores, and ring, O bells!
But I, with mournful tread,
Walk the deck my Captain has fled,
Full of cold and dread.
