A Poem For Our Grandchildren During Ugly Times
- Allan Shedlin
- Oct 1
- 3 min read
Updated: 6 days ago
Guest Poetry by E. Ethelbert Miller
Writer, Teacher, and Literary Activist
POEM FOR OUR GRANDCHILDREN
Before the Barbarians
arrive at the gate we must
hide all our precious history.
Before the plunder, the erasure
and the destruction we must
be believers believing after hope
comes paradise.
On the day we emerge victorious
and triumphant we will uncover
all we hid from the
Barbarians.
On that day we will ask ourselves–
What will we do with all this beauty?
- E. Ethelbert Miller
* * *
EDITOR'S NOTE: With Halloween fast approaching and social media besieging us with a reminder of all the horror movies available to frighten us, I can't even begin to fathom the real horrors that we perpetrate on the most vulnerable among us, our children – yes, we must consider them "our children" no matter how far away they may be.
Ethelbert's "Poem for Our Grandchildren" is a powerful reminder.
On a personal note, his poem strikes my heart and reminds me that I'm spending increasing amounts of time trying to ward off despair for our children growing up in a world on the precipice of global insanity.
Being a granddaddy of five and having spent a long career working with and for children, I gain some solace being aware of the resilience of children. But that resilience has its limits. As war deaths of daddies, mommies, brothers, sisters, and grandparents proliferate with no end in sight and starvation becomes ever more prevalent and unconscionable, it is the famine of our souls and consciences that we must address now.
Right now.
– Allan
Daddying Film Festival 2026
Forty-six countries and counting! The 5th annual Daddying Film Festival & Forum (D3F) welcomes film and video submissions, including TikToks and Instagram reels, from students (3rd-graders through undergraduates), Dads, Granddads, dad figures, and indie filmmakers worldwide! Our earlybird discount deadline is Friday, October 24th and regular deadline is Monday, December 8th. Celebrate the importance of involved Dads/dad figures and send us your stories via our D3F website or FilmFreeway!
The Washington Post once called E. Ethelbert Miller, "arguably the most influential person in Washington's vast and vibrant African American arts community. And perhaps its most unappreciated." Miller is a poet, writer, teacher, literary activist, and frequent contributor to the Daddying blog. He is the author of two memoirs, including Fathering Words: The Making of An African American Writer, which celebrated its 20th anniversary in 2022 with a reprinting, and several books of poetry, including The Collected Poems of E. Ethelbert Miller, which celebrates more than 40 years of his work. For 17 years, Miller served as the editor of Poet Lore, the oldest poetry magazine published in the United States. His poetry has been translated into nearly a dozen languages. Miller is a two-time Fulbright Senior Specialist Program Fellow to Israel. He holds an honorary degree of Doctor of Literature from Emory and Henry College and has taught at several universities. Miller hosts the weekly WPFW morning radio show On the Margin with E. Ethelbert Miller and is a producer of The Scholars on UDC-TV. Miller was inducted into the 2015 Washington, DC, Hall of Fame, awarded the 2016 AWP George Garrett Award for Outstanding Community Service in Literature, and presented the 2016 DC Mayor’s Arts Award for "Distinguished Honor." In 2018, he was inducted into Gamma Xi Phi and appointed as an ambassador for the Authors Guild. Miller’s most recent book, If God Invented Baseball, earned the 2019 Literary Award for poetry by the Black Caucus of the American Library Association.
