Happy 4th of July

I’m celebrating my freedom today by not posting much. I will, however, offer this historical tidbit in honor of the many patriotic songs played today: Katharine Lee Bates, author of “America the Beautiful,” lived for 25 years with fellow Wellesley College professor Katherine Coman, in what is commonly called a “Boston marriage.” It may be ahistorical to call her a lesbian in a modern sense; we don’t have evidence of any sexual relationship between the two women. One only need read “Yellow Clover,” the volume of poetry Bates wrote upon Coman’s death, however, to know that their bond went beyond mere friendship. In the poem, If You Could Come, Bates says:

My love, my love, if you could come once more
From your high place,
I would not question you for heavenly lore,
But, silent, take the comfort of your face.

I would not ask you if those golden spheres
In love rejoice,
If only our stained star hath sin and tears,
But fill my famished hearing with your voice.

One touch of you were worth a thousand
creeds.
My wound is numb
Through toil-pressed day, but all night long
it bleeds
In aching dreams, and still you cannot come.

That’s good enough for me to claim her as a spiritual lesbian foresister, whether or not she was an actual one. Something to think about as the marching bands go by and the radio stations continue to blast us with ardent American refrains.