Back in 2005, my son was teaching English in Korea. As a fan of both Shakespeare and the US Constitution, it occurred to him that it might be fun to “translate” the Constitution into iambic pentameter. About a year ago, he published this on the blog “Overthinking It.” You can read the entire Constitution (through the Bill of Rights) in The U.S. Constitution is a Poem.
I am sharing this in honor of Captain Humayun Kahn and his parents, Khizr and Ghazala Kahn. When Mr. Kahn held up his copy of the Constitution at the DNC and challenged Donald Trump to read it, I felt chills. I am so sorry (but not surprised) that Mr. and Mrs. Kahn are now on the receiving end of vile statements from Trump and his followers. It is very clear to me that Trump has not read it, nor have his followers — or if they did, they certainly did not understand what it means.
Not that it really needed to be written as a poem, but I enjoyed reading my son’s version as he sent it to me piecemeal back in 2005. By translating it, both he and I gained a new appreciation for the actual document. Here is the Preamble, in iambic pentameter:
PREAMBLE
Now we, the people of the United States,
In order to perfect our union more,
Establish Justice, and insure within
Our borders maximum tranquility,
Promote the welfare of our citizens,
And get the blessings liberty bestows,
For us and for our daughters and our sons,
Ordain and do establish here and now
This Constitution for the U.S.A.
My son is now a diplomat with the U.S. Department of State. As he says regarding this effort:
To be honest, much of the translation work was a slog. After the thrill of poetizing the soaring rhetoric of the Preamble (a truly inspiring prose passage that reads, I think, pretty well in verse too), several pages of administrative technicalities seemed like a pretty thankless job. I have a particularly nasty memory of the section of Article I that lists how many Representatives each state will have prior to the first national census; wrestling the names of the states into the formal confines of the meter gave me some serious headaches. Still, though, there were some good times as well. In particular, when I reached the part of Article II that describes the Oath of Office of the President, I was pleased that I did finally manage to work in at least one rhyming couplet, having the President swear to “Preserve, protect and guard in every way / The Constitution of the U.S.A.”