oh my country,
‘tis of thee I sing,
‘tis of thee I’ve always sung.
measure for measure, beat for beat,
the quality of my tone and
sweetness of my melodies
are all from you:
your steel-glass cities rising up
from mud, from swamps;
your open spaces, thick with grain
and corn; your vastnesses
made small by humming highways
glinting in the sun.
your songs thrum in the rivers’ rush;
they echo from the mountains,
ring in stonework benches set
in your town squares–
and music in your people, too,
native and invading thief,
immigrant and refugee,
their children and their children’s children,
laborers and thinkers, teachers and makers,
and takers, too, all bound
together by your promise
and by hope interminably deferred–
and darker notes, and dissonance, as well:
your crumbling bridges, crimes of hate,
toxic rivers, and the loss
of civil disagreement,
the mournful tunes of countless people
endlessly betrayed, denied a share
in this near-infinite abundance–
how did we allow
the squandering of our glittering wealth?
how did we become
convinced the enemy is us?
oh my country,
would that I could hold us all,
sing us to comfort,
ease our fears of scarcity
and strangeness; would that I
could fill our bellies and our hearts
and keep them full, disarm this hate.
oh my country, ‘tis of thee I sing–
‘tis of thee I will always sing–
but as our songs turn ever more
to fear and greed, my country,
‘tis for thee I weep.
poem (c) 2017 D. Ohlandt
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