Inauguration Day 2021: Looking Forward and Back

Context

On January 20, 1993, Maya Angelou spoke this stanza as part of her inaugural poem, “On the Pulse of the Morning”:

Lift up your faces, you have a piercing need
For this bright morning dawning for you.
History, despite its wrenching pain
Cannot be unlived, but if faced
With courage, need not be lived again.

Task

Respond to Angelou’s words in the context of Inauguration Day 2021. Use the questions below to support your thinking. Construct your response flexibly – in words, images, whatever genre or modality feels most authentic to you.

What are our “piercing needs” as a nation? What are yours as a citizen? As a person?
What are your hopes and fears for this “bright morning dawning?”
What “wrenching pain[s]” have we faced in recent history?
Respond to the idea that history “cannot be unlived” but “need not be lived again.” What is the significance of this idea? For you personally? For our nation?
What does it mean to face history “with courage” – for you, for others, for our nation?