The Land
Jeanine Ring ))(*)((
Dear Langston Hughes, once spoke this poetry:
"America never was America to me"
= (~) =
'Tis not the greed I fear,
nor war and wealth as bane
and yet I shudder in this storm-reaped plain.
A land divides in crumble and collapse.
Our borders blur and waver.
Cliffsides raize our maps.
The border clears as sharp, black, barb-strung line;
I see all concrete, towers, caught in twine
as Purity and India forced two trains
to filter, flee, to homeland, foreign plains.
The old are sated and the younger fear
this land, America, can disappear.
Which warring house will save her?
= (~) =
I see a light receding.
The gypsy caravans
are wrapped their colors hidden
on aimless refuge west, now north, as bidden
seeking shoreline as the provinces fail,
Behind them one long state.
The wagons crawl their trail.
Law by law, declares their loves unwanted,
children shackled and young lovers hunted.
City fathers swell mens' chests in pride
and boast their better crimes in philocide.
= (~) =
I hear new railroads digging, underneath this land.
States are poised like daggers in their hand
Mist; phantoms cry, so distant, yet so near
"Jane... Jane..."
I hear the voice cries, firm, faint, clear...
And yet a damp and wretched air's familiar taint...
It smells of chloroform and window's paint.
I see the cars all bundled up as beds
In screaming comfort and in bent, bowed heads
for the edge of this America and night.
A shimmering shore of refuge or
mere mirage.
= (~) =
From Venice, over ridge, my sight has seen...
I gaze the dust, the peaks, the valleys green.
And beyond...
A growing, arid, plain.
A tang like ozone and a thickening rain.
The shadow creeps there, dark and russet, cold.
One by one, the keeps, the cities, fold
from Texas, Georgia, Richmond to encompass
a wide and fearsome range from sea to silent bay.
I fear this dawn more each chill waning day.
= (~) =
And yet I know, that somewhere,
on a sun-warmed sea
a prophet rises, breathes one long, brief, smile.
The hordes of jerking Vandals are braced back
The border holds; the shield of life intact.
Our vigilance can sit for one small while
from hordes of San Francisco, New York, Hun;
He rests. Exhausted,
while his work is done-
he harrows, sweat, with all-clear visionry
where my own country ends his country free.