Amanda Gorman, the 23-year-old poet who recited a stunning poem at the 2021 presidential inauguration, has just released a new work.
On Wednesday, Instagram debuted Gorman’s poem on the platform with a video of the 23-year-old reciting the work, titled “New Day’s Lyric,” inside a theater.
In an interview with PEOPLE, Gorman shared how she believes poetry is a form of rebellion.
“Poetry is so important because I think it’s a unique communication form, which demands us to rebel against older orders,” Gorman says. “When I’m writing a poem, I automatically feel the liberty of… breaking grammar, of deconstructing that which I’ve been told is perfect and pristine and true. And so I think that’s often why the language of the people or the populace is poetry.”
Read on for the full transcript of Gorman’s poem…
May this be the day
We come together.
Mourning, we come to mend,
Withered, we come to weather,
Torn, we come to tend,
Battered, we come to better.
Tethered by this year of yearning,
We are learning
That though we weren’t ready for this,
We have been readied by it.
We steadily vow that no matter
How we are weighed down,
We must always pave a way forward.
This hope is our door, our portal.
Even if we never get back to normal,
Someday we can venture beyond it,
To leave the known and take the first steps.
So let us not return to what was normal,
But reach toward what is next.
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What was cursed, we will cure.
What was plagued, we will prove pure.
Where we tend to argue, we will try to agree,
Those fortunes we forswore, now the future we foresee,
Where we weren’t aware, we’re now awake;
Those moments we missed
Are now these moments we make,
The moments we meet,
And our hearts, once all together beaten,
Now all together beat.
*
Come, look up with kindness yet,
For even solace can be sourced from sorrow.
We remember, not just for the sake of yesterday,
But to take on tomorrow.
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We heed this old spirit,
In a new day’s lyric,
In our hearts, we hear it:
For auld lang syne, my dear,
For auld lang syne.
Be bold, sang Time this year,
Be bold, sang Time,
For when you honor yesterday,
Tomorrow ye will find.
Know what we’ve fought
Need not be forgot nor for none.
It defines us, binds us as one,
Come over, join this day just begun.
For wherever we come together,
We will forever overcome.
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