Scarlett, O Scarlett, you are self-destroyed
because you would not see your truest friend
and despised all you might have else enjoyed.
I ache over you, as the pages end,
though, yes, “Tomorrow is another day.”
We knew your iron will would never bend;
until it broke, shattered like hardened clay
baked in the unyielding sun of scorn.
Those green eyes that would make the others pay
for the burned cotton and the trampled corn.
And we are just like you, firm but desolate
lovers who press our thumbs into the thorn—
We use Confederate coin to pay our debt
and soiled rags to polish our regret.
I just finished reading Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind yesterday. Despite serious reservations about the politics of race and history that pervade that story, I found the depictions of Scarlet’s selfishness and her regret over the squandered opportunities for love all too true. That novel ends with the line, “After all, tomorrow is another day,” which you can see incorporated into the poem above. Also, you should read the poem by Ernest Dowson that lent the book it’s name, “Non Sum Qualis Eram Bonae Sub Regno Cynarae.”