by Jon Chesterson
‘Pity a nation that despises a passion in
its dream, yet submits in its awakening’.
‘Pity the nation whose breath is money
and sleeps the sleep of the too well fed’.
I think we all need a rest and break from being bombarded every day with Trump’s negative, bullying, hate-raking, scowling, arrogant face and voice, his crowd poking fingers, lies, false news, disinformation, extreme hyperbole, grandiose delusions, egocentric temper, revenge, racism, misogyny, hostility, authoritarianism, and propaganda. I for one am sick of his intrusion into my life in all our public spaces in Australia on a daily basis for goddam years, and frankly, I think that this is primarily why he is back again – because the mere mention of his name in mainstream and social media puts him constantly in the limelight, normalising and fanning his diatribe, his abusive pathology and narcissism. He is irrelevant to the world of humanity, the arts, science, reason, culture, grace, progress, fairness, genuine democracy, freedom, leadership and integrity. He is utterly unfit to govern, taking our modern world perilously down to new lows in our global struggle for survival at an equitable, economic, ecological, human and existential level.
That said, I have heard many explanations for this resurgence, but no-one has stated what to me seems obvious, well that is apart from Bernie Saunders, but no-one listens to him, least of all mainstream and social media, and in part there’s the tragedy. You will remember while Joe Biden was latterly fiddling around in the White House, Kamala Harris was on the campaign trail declaring her roots with ‘middle-class’ America, and she made that very clear, reinforced by her education, career and background. She did a fine job in the 100 days she was given, but who on either side represented the lower social economic diaspora, hard-working, vulnerable, middle to poorer communities, first during COVID, and then the greedy unspoken corporate-driven inflationary cost of living crisis? While billionaire America was throwing money at their own kind in an ever-increasing social-economic divide, a vast swathe of American people found themselves unrepresented, and the angry or disillusioned ‘mob’ found themselves an angry vengeful leader they believe, heaven knows why or how, who’d deliver the promised land. Yes, the pompous wart on the American landscape had split the vote and sailed into harbour to hold another rampant tea party, and the masses have fallen for it with a few million dollar lotto packages up for grabs from another pompous wart, Elon Musk. And he has bought his way into the White House where he will expect his dues paid back ten-fold (like any billionaire or corporate empire) at Congress’ pleasure and the American People’s expense. Those of us on the other side of the wall, the rest of the world can see there will likely be a reckoning, as the promised land is simply not within Trump’s motive, means or grasp – just what’s in it for him and his chosen mates. Beware Australia, there is a lesson gathering in the dream, do not submit on wakening or pander to the too well fed.
But it’s time for a break from the curse of this insufferable and prolonged intrusion – My apologies to elephants who are indomitably an inspiration to life on Earth, there’s room enough. Now let the poems speak.
The Irony of Three Poems and Our Times
Founding fathers while mothers look on ~ We might be forgiven for what the founding fathers of America intended, not really that long ago. In 1776, Philadelphia, the 2nd Continental Congress declared independence of the colonies as the ‘United States of America’. Under General George Washington, it won the Revolutionary War in 1783, the Treaty of Paris established the borders of the new Republic. The Articles of Confederation established a central government, but not stability, and a convention wrote a new Constitution adopted in 1789 the same year George Washington became the first president, and a Bill of Rights followed in 1791. But there was no place or recognition for the Indigenous peoples, the Indian tribes and nations of North America, who were displaced, pillaged and murdered for over a century as colonisation continued across the continent.
233 years hence, and on the eve of the 47th president (elect), and for all its pomp, ceremony and stature we can see how rigid, vague and vulnerable the Constitution is for all its concrete, and clarity, rights and freedoms, and how easy it can be overthrown in the modern era – the Capitol Hill riots insurrection of 6 January 2020, notwithstanding the American Civil War 1861-1865 (not very civil), and in 2024/5 the legitimisation and return to power of a convicted felon and the most corrupt and corruptible, liable and libellous, salacious, misogynist, treasonable and grandiose president in US history, whom a popular majority deem to elect as their leader. One who appears to paint himself as messianic, ordained by god for dodging a bullet, not merely a humble or privileged (as the case may be) founding father, though the land of these colonies and territories had been occupied, governed and protected for thousands of years, and once again not a whisper to its roots. There was no place for black American Africans not even after the abolition of slavery in the 13th Amendment of 1865, and no right or access to vote after the 15th Amendment in 1870. There was no place for women to vote until the 19th Amendment in 1920, and it took a further 81 years before Obama was elected president, but still no woman has reached the top office in the Oval Office, not even where merit and justice would have served the nation. No migrant, even if a citizen is eligible for such office, excluded by the Natural-born citizen clause. Native Americans were excluded from voting and standing for office until as late as the the Voting Rights Act 1965, and only recognised as citizens in the Indian Citizenship Act 1924. In the State and National museums, grand halls and institutions much of the history and struggle has been suppressed even up to present day, while a white man can incite insurrection and find himself immune to the law according to the highest court in the land, if he is or has been president of the USA.
More the irony, that for more than 2 centuries the US was a crucible for migrants upon which the backbone of present day North America has been built – and now the mission is to deport millions of them back to ‘where they belong’, Mexico and Latin America under the import and insult of ‘illegals’, ‘criminals’, ‘murderers’, ‘dog eaters’ and ‘rapists’. The truth is, the vast majority are seeking asylum from poverty, political oppression, safety, drug wars and foreign wars waged and abetted by the US overseas for more than a century, eking out an existence as best they can, a life no more than what any ordinary migrant or person might seek.
Emma Lazarus (1849-1887) was an American-Jewish poet and activist born in New York. Inspired by the construction of the Statue of Liberty and ‘Lady of the Harbour’, she wrote a poem to welcome those who travelled from far off lands and all, to forge a new life, as they set their eyes and hopes for the first time on the new world from their Atlantic crossing. From there she would look on perpetually across the waters to welcome them.
The New Colossus, Emma Lazarus, 1883
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
with conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
a mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
the air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
with silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
the wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
From Lebanon to America and back ~ Israel in Gaza and Palestine. Khalil Gibran (1883-1931) was a Lebanese-American poet and philosopher born in Bsharri, northern Lebanon, a mountain village which itself was a refuge for Maronite Christians (Native and Arab Lebanese, and descendants of the Phoenicians) fleeing Byzantine persecution as early as the 7th Century AD.
He migrated to America at the age of 12yrs with his mother and siblings, where she worked as a seamstress and he was enrolled in a school in Boston. 3 years later he returned to his native land to complete his schooling at the Collège de la Sagesse in Beirut, returning to America in 1902 upon his younger sister’s death, and his mother’s the following year. Gibran did not consider himself to be a member of any particular country, saying “the whole earth is my homeland and all men are my fellow countrymen”. His poem ‘Pity the Nation’ was published posthumously several years after his death, and now considered unlikely to be a lament of his native or adopted country, rather a warning to any nation, if not prophetic.
Khalil Gibran and his family would have been greeted on entry to his new world in 1895 by the ‘Lady of the Harbour’ in New York, she being only 9 years old herself and his junior, and perhaps even Emma’s poem if not a few years later. He may also have at some later date made his acquaintance with ‘Our Lady of Lebanon’ on later journeys back and forth before or after the Great War (WW1).
Pity the Nation, Khalil Gibran, (‘The Garden of the Prophet’, 1933)
Pity the nation that is full of beliefs and empty of religion.
Pity the nation that acclaims the bully as hero,
and that deems the glittering conqueror bountiful.
Pity a nation that despises a passion in its dream,
yet submits in its awakening.
Pity the nation that raises not its voice
save when it walks in a funeral,
boasts not except among its ruins,
and will rebel not save when its neck is laid
between the sword and the block.
Pity the nation whose statesman is a fox,
whose philosopher is a juggler,
and whose art is the art of patching and mimicking.
Pity the nation that welcomes its new ruler with trumpeting,
and farewells him with hooting,
only to welcome another with trumpeting again.
Pity the nation whose sages are dumb with years,
and whose strong men are yet in the cradle.
Pity the nation divided into fragments,
each fragment deeming itself a nation.
ارحم على الامة
ارحم على الأمة المليئة بالمعتقدات والخالية من الدين.
ارحم على الأمة التي تلبس ثوبا لا يحاك.
وتأكل خبزا لا تحصد.
أشفق على الأمة التي تعتبر المتنمر بطلاً ،
ويعتبر منتصرها رائعا.
ارحم أمة تحتقر الشغف في أحلامها
لكنه يخضع لها عندما تستيقظ.
ارحم على الأمة التي لا ترفع صوتها
إلا عندما تمشي في جنازة ،
وتفتخر فقط بين أطلالها ،
ولن تنقذ نفسها عندما توضع رقبتها
بين السيف والكتلة.
ارحم على الأمة التي فيها رجل الدولة وهو ثعلب ،
والفيلسوف مشعوذ
فنه من الترقيع والتقليد
ارحم على الأمة التي تستقبل حاكمها الجديد بصوت عالٍ ،
ويقول وداعا له بسخرية ،
فقط للترحيب بآخر من خلال الاحتفال الصاخب مرة أخرى
ارحم على أمة حكماؤها أغبياء السنين ،
وأولئك الذين لا يزال رجالهم الأقوياء في المهد.
ارحموا الأمة منقسمة ،
وكل قطعة تعتبر نفسها أمة.
خليل جبرا
Gift from France, enlightening the world ~ Twist of fate. Lawrence Ferlinghetti (1919-2021) was an American-Italian poet, painter and social activist born in New York, his mother of Portuguese Sephandic (Iberian) Jewish descent. Ferlinghetti met his wife-to-be, Selden Kirby-Smith, granddaughter of Edmund Kirby-Smith, in 1946 aboard a ship enroute to France, to study in Paris at the Sorbonne. Her father was a Confederate States Army general who oversaw the Trans-Mississippi Department (comprising Arkansas, Missouri, Texas, western Louisiana, Arizona Territory and the Indian Territory) during the American Civil War.
Lawrence Ferlinghetti served in the US Navy throughout World War 2, as the captain of a submarine chaser in the Normandy invasion, 1944. He moved to San Francisco in 1951 and founded City Lights, an independent bookstore and publisher and went on to publish many of the ‘Beat’ poets, a literary subculture movement and group of authors whose work explored and influenced American culture and politics in the post-World War 2 era. He was named San Francisco’s Poet Laureate in August 1998. On 24 March 2019, on his 100th birthday, the city of San Francisco declared it Lawrence Ferlinghetti Day.
‘If you would be a poet, create works capable of answering the challenge of apocalyptic times, even if this meaning sounds apocalyptic… You are an American or a non-American, you can conquer the conquerors with words’ [Poetry an Insurgent Art – I am signaling you through the flames].
Pity the Nation, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, 2007 (after Khalil Gibran)
Pity the nation whose people are sheep
and whose shepherds mislead them
Pity the nation whose leaders are liars
whose sages are silenced
and whose bigots haunt the airwaves
Pity the nation that raises not its voice
except to praise conquerors
and acclaim the bully as hero
and aims to rule the world
with force and by torture
Pity the nation that knows
no other language but its own
and no other culture but its own
Pity the nation whose breath is money
and sleeps the sleep of the too well fed
Pity the nation oh pity the people
who allow their rights to erode
and their freedoms to be washed away
My country, tears of thee
Sweet land of liberty!
And now I do wonder what all three of our American and non-American poets would say today if they could witness the Trump MAGA insurgence – twist of fate. What would the founding fathers say having opened the doors to those who came and enlightened her shores, migrants whose descendants acclaim the bully? What about the legacy stolen from Native Americans, is their voice reflected on either side of the governing parties, did anyone ever mention them?
What will Liberty say tomorrow, will she lift her cape and be deported back to France or will she make her own way back across the Atlantic Ocean in search of enlightenment and democracy?
That said, I think we all need a break from the curse of this intrusion, with or without America, and soon I guess we will know which direction they are heading, no apologies expected. We will all live long and prosper in hope and not expect it any time too soon.
‘I lift my lamp beside the golden door’,
‘sweet land of liberty’, with less to go
around than ever there was before
and Earth had room enough.
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