The Plan

The effort to impose a coherent national picture upon events Has, one might say, become a little more competitive Even so, among the overlapping claims There is now emerging what strategists, officials, and candidates alike Appear increasingly content to treat As the campaign's central policy frame The Border Integrity and Community Stability Plan A title whose breadth is, no doubt, intended to reassure As much as to specify The Border Integrity and Community Stability Plan The Border Integrity and Community Stability Plan The Border Integrity and Community Stability Plan We restore trust in the line Make the threshold something real Hold the door without a panic Turn the pressure into deal A rule must mean the thing it says A frame must hold when numbers press A country cannot live by drift Or call its softness tenderness Queue means queue A line means line A door's a door, not stage design A threshold that lets anything through Is just a word they say at you Say crossing Say removal Say the rule applies in fact Say the state can still enforce a line And not die of the act Your threshold is fear in official language Your queue is how exclusion sounds decent Your door is a way to make closure polite Your balance a mask for the same old treatment You dress a shiver in policy terms And call the tremor care You build a gentler-looking wall Then ask us not to stare The Plan The Plan Say it slow and make it stand The Plan The Plan Pass the weight from hand to hand A line for trust A door for care A threshold drawn in public air The Plan The Plan A phrase made broad enough to bear We cannot govern by denial Or by the loudest room alive A line must be administrable A state must also keep its side No chaos at the crossing point No theatre at the gate No fire dressed up as policy No rule too vague to regulate You had your vague You had your blur You had the softer words for "stir" Now all at once you've found the Plan As if the border built itself by hand Say backlog Say deportation Say the threshold bites or don't A line that only looks official Is the line that people won't You make the queue a moral picture A lesson dressed in patient form As though a line were neutral simply Because it shelters from the storm But someone writes the waiting room And someone names the outside And someone teaches fear to speak In tones the decent can abide The Plan The Plan Short enough for every hand The Plan The Plan Heavy as a borrowed land A queue for trust A door for calm A threshold drawn to sound like balm The Plan The Plan A slogan with a filing cabinet psalm Can the Plan restore confidence Will the Plan reset the terms Is the Plan now broad consensus Has the Plan absorbed concerns Can the Plan reassure the centre Can the Plan contain the right Can the Plan look firm by daylight And still sleep with itself at night Hold the line Draw the line Who does the line make clean Make it real Make it mean Mean for whom, and what between Keep the trust Keep them out Hear the grammar start to tilt Hold the door Shut the route Watch a fear get softly built The Plan The Plan Now the whole night knows the brand The Plan The Plan A country cupped in one command A door for law A line for dread A threshold under every head The Plan The Plan A phrase that grows more clear when less is said The Plan The Plan The Plan