Let America Be America Again

Ouch! My head hurts. I feel like screaming. Thank you, Edvard Munch, for capturing the way I feel right now on canvas many years ago. I’ve felt like screaming for some time--especially since listening to Sarah Palin speak at the Republican National Convention.

THE SCREAM

or

I'm a liberal soccer mom and I don't need no stinkin' lipstick!!!

I try not to let my own political leanings find their way onto my blog--but I just couldn’t help it this week. I’m so tired of the politics of division, of the media whose pundits blather on about meaningless things instead of important issues like the national debt, health care insurance for all Americans, well-paying jobs, home foreclosures, the War in Iraq, torture memos, and on and on and on…!

So here, without further blather of my own, I give you a poem I selected for this Poetry Friday.

Let America Be America Again
by Langston Hughes

Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.

(America never was America to me.)

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed--
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.

(It never was America to me.)

O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.

(There's never been equality for me,
Nor freedom in this "homeland of the free.")

Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?
And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?

I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slavery's scars.
I am the red man driven from the land,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek--
And finding only the same old stupid plan
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.

I am the young man, full of strength and hope,
Tangled in that ancient endless chain
Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!
Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!
Of work the men! Of take the pay!
Of owning everything for one's own greed!

You can read the rest of the poem here.

P. S. Like Obama, I, too, am the child of a father who was not born in this country.

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At Blue Rose Girls, I have a poem by W. S. Merwin entitled To the Light of September.

The Poetry Friday Roundup is here this week. Leave your comment and link at this post.