In response to Richard Blanco’s Inauguration poem, the awesome Erin Manning, right here in this blog’s comboxes, delivered the best poem on Inauguration Day. You missed it if you didn’t read that thread. Here’s what she wrote:

On the Inauguration

There is a madness in the hearts of men
Which makes them babble words of honor, praise,
And glory when in truth they’ve not yet been
Triumphant save in very little ways–
This error causes us to give awards
And gleaming trophies of all shapes and sizes
To children; while to men who drag out wars,
We proffer Newsweek covers and Peace prizes.
Moved by this same impulse we congregate
To laud our leaders when they’ve just begun–
For who can ever dare anticipate
How we will feel about them when they’re done?
And so we sing them in with Blanco verse,
And hope that life and poems won’t get much worse.

Naturally, Erin wins the Evans-Manning Prize, and quite possibly the whole Internet.