The poem features three free verse paragraphs (versagraphs) and becomes particularly erudite in the final versagraph with its allusions to classical mythology and historical figures.
First Versagraph: “No one is safe. The streets are unsafe”
The speaker in Terence Winch’s “Social Security” begins with exaggerations, claiming tongue-in-cheek that “No one is safe. The streets are unsafe.” Lest the reader miss the overstatement, he continues, “Even in the safety zones, it’s not safe.” Of course, the exaggeration contains a rather enormous element of truth, that nothing in the physical universe is ever permanent and whole as it might delude humanity into thinking.
Still the speaker proceeds playfully, focusing on the repetition of the word, “safe,” which appears in all but the final line of the eight-line, first versagraph. He claims that even things a person might put into “safe-deposit boxes” are not safe. His concluding lines make the unusual observation that even at “baseball games” people are not safe nowadays.
Second Versagraph: “At night I go around in the dark”
The speaker then offers his own experience with the lack of safety. Even in his own home, he fumbles around “in the dark” locking doors and windows, and then rechecking to make sure he locked all of them. He reiterates, “It's not safe here. / It's not safe and they know it”—apparently acknowledging his family, who along with him, understand that their own home is vulnerable.
However, to take the tension off the real possibility of one’s home not being safe, he infuses a humorous diversion, “People get hurt using safety pins.” Of course, they might, but not really very hurt, and likely not very often. Still, the exaggeration and reality of the issues of safety continue to collide for this speaker as he unveils his fears about those safety issues.
Third Versagraph: “It was not always this way”
In the final versagraph, the speaker offers examples to support his concocted claim that safety in the past was not so compromised as it is today. He exaggerates again by asserting, “Long ago, everyone felt safe.” The speaker cites Aristotle as a historical figure who “never felt danger.” Of course, he offers no example of support, because he has none. He knows that Aristotle would, in fact, have felt at least as much danger, possibly even more than we feel today, because of the precarious political struggles that were playing out around him.
The speaker feels on safer ground to say that the first historian “Herodotus felt danger / only when Xerxes was around.” Herodotus, of course, wrote about the Persian King Xerxes’ invasion of Greece in the fourth century B.C. Another example of past fears vs. today’s fears is that back in the past “Young women / were afraid of wingèd dragons, but felt / relaxed otherwise.” Now, of course, women are fearful every time they venture out.
The speaker’s next example of ancient fear alludes to the character Timotheus from a poem by John Dryden, “Alexander’s Feast,” demonstrating the calming effect of music. The speaker then caps off his hilarity by invoking Euclid, asserting that the mathematician, who was “full of music himself,” had put his faith in “safety in numbers,” which remains even today a universal bit of advice for those who go about, especially after dark.
 |
