I write as the No Kings protests fill the streets of cities and towns across America. It’s a beautiful sight: Free men and free women (and some kids, too!), ordinary citizens of all ages coming together peacefully and raising their voices in defense of our democracy. Under the crystalline sunlight that shone down on much of the country, under the rain that fell here and there, under the shadow of the creeping authoritarianism spreading from the White House, millions of people left the comfort and security of their homes to find each other, and walk together, and together lift the pledge in their hearts:

Not on our watch. We will preserve this Republic. The American way of democratic self-government under the Constitution and Bill of Rights will not be broken by any man, any movement, any political party, any force.

An extraordinary day, and yet I love the ordinariness of it. This is what we Americans do, when we have to. And so, as in crisis times before, the people rise. Ordinary, decent, law-abiding Americans—people who pay their taxes, obey the laws, and help make our country work every day across every industry and enterprise, in every occupation and commitment—they answer the call and step forward from their quiet days to do their part. As they have always done, when necessary. It’s necessary now.

I love your signs. In them, I heard the true voice of America, in the timelessness of the words emblazoned by hand on so many of those cardboard placards:

“Defend the Constitution”

“Fight for Democracy!”

“GOVERNMENT OF BY FOR THE PEOPLE”

And I heard the true voice of America in the mocking signs, the furious signs, the weird ones, too:

“No Kings except Burger King”

“The Turd Reich”

“You Want A Fight? You Found It”

“So Bad Even Introverts Are Here”

America has so many voices. That is our strength. Donald Trump cannot understand that. He is a weak man, and so he fears diversity of opinion, or proud dissent, or any kind of criticism at all. Trump demands one voice from the people, one vast chorus of mincing, cringing submission and flattery. Those revolting cabinet meetings he holds constitute the truest expression of Trumpist discourse. Shame on every man and woman in that room who have succumbed and given this corrupt old man exactly what he craves, in front of all the world. Shame on those Americans who seem to worship him like a god and cheerfully give him license to trample on our Constitution.

That shame will never touch the marchers on the streets today. As so many signs said: Not subjects, but citizens. Citizens do not cringe before their leaders or silence themselves or grovel. They rise. And so you did.

Looking out at this day, I thought of Walt Whitman, of course. Whitman, the great bard of our democratic people, who understood so readily and so profoundly the strength in all our voices. “I hear America singing,” he famously celebrated, “the varied carols I hear.”

And Whitman put into prose the truest statement of the great democratic adventure of our country:

“The Americans of all nations at any time upon the earth, have probably the fullest poetical nature. The United States themselves are essentially the greatest poem. In the history of the earth hitherto, the largest and most stirring appear tame and orderly to their ampler largeness and stir. Here at last is something in the doings of man that corresponds with the broadcast doings of the day and night.”

So it is fitting that our poem this week comes from Walt Whitman, if only because it seems almost like you might have seen that broad, bearded, gentle old man out on the streets with you, giving Trump the business. How Walt would have despised our wannabe dictator!

But Whitman’s gift to us today is more than a celebration of democratic values. It is his marrow-deep understanding that there is no such thing as a self-effectuating or self-correcting democratic system. Indeed, the “democratic system,” to Whitman, is nothing less than each individual American rising into his, her, their true self. In this moment, that is such a crucial poetic insight. We have no kings. We also have no knights in shining armor, no cavalry riding over the ridge, coming to our rescue. It’s only us.

Here is a passage from Whitman’s great poetic meditation, “By Blue Ontario’s Shore.” It was written right after the Civil War, when Whitman had grown disillusioned with politics and the political leaders who arose after Abraham Lincoln. He never lost faith in us, though.

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by Walt Whitman

O I see flashing that this America is only you and me,

Its power, weapons, testimony, are you and me,

Its crimes, lies, thefts, defections, are you and me,

Its Congress is you and me, the officers, capitols, armies, ships, are you and me,

Its endless gestations of new States are you and me,

The war, (that war so bloody and grim, the war I will henceforth forget), was you and me,

Natural and artificial are you and me,

Freedom, language, poems, employments, are you and me,

Past, present, future, are you and me.

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I dare not shirk any part of myself,

Not any part of America good or bad,

Not to build for that which builds for mankind,

Not to balance ranks, complexions, creeds, and the sexes,

Not to justify science nor the march of equality,

Nor to feed the arrogant blood of the brawn belov’d of time.

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I am for those that have never been master’d,

For men and women whose tempers have never been master’d,

For those whom laws, theories, conventions, can never master.

I am for those who walk abreast with the whole earth,

Who inaugurate one to inaugurate all.

I will not be outfaced by irrational things,

I will penetrate what it is in them that is sarcastic upon me,

I will make cities and civilizations defer to me,

This is what I have learnt from America—it is the amount, and it I teach again.

(Democracy, while weapons were everywhere aim’d at your breast,

I saw you serenely give birth to immortal children, saw in dreams your dilating form,

Saw you with spreading mantle covering the world.)