I am much better at traditional poetry than I am at any other. I have trouble understanding the new age, what-does-emotion-smell-like free verse that everyone seems to like now, but every once in a while I come across an idea that doesn't fit into a rhyme scheme. This is my favorite free verse poem.
America is Singing
America is singing;
From the dust, from times of old, her song rolls like
a distant army upon my ear.
A pounding chorus of men, drums, swords, reverberates
from every alabaster city.
Revolution, democracy, enlightenment, and freedom built
her walls, wrote her song.
She rides the swells of the music history provides;
she glories in its marvelous crescendos and mourns with every solemn note.
America is singing.
America is crying.
She weeps for the fallen and for the living.
The sting of war pierces her, and the strength of her
people bears her up on wings of joy.
She cries for beauty and triumph;
She cries for death and corruption.
Always forward she strives; always with a tear in her
eye.
America is crying.
America is dying.
A grave sickness wears on her greatness from the
inside.
Once glorious and sublime, her vision has blurred, her
values have staled.
The bloated, tattered sails of men’s lips draw close
to her in word, but not in action.
The mounting forces untrue to her plan have brought
her to her knees.
Once powerful and free, shackles of oppression hang
from her weakened frame.
America is dying.
America is pleading.
She hopes for the day her shackles will fall.
She prays for truth to rise from the dust.
She waits for a hero’s lauded return.
She longs for her sickness’s cure.
She looks to those who can, and implores them to act.
America is pleading.
America cries in her lowly prison,
And pleads for the day
That she may sing again.
No comments:
Post a Comment