The soldier will pause in the desert.
The angry patriot, born from pride, she
leans on the tank as the sun rises over the hissing sand.
She is alert to both possibilities, sudden death
from the horizon, and new life from beyond it.
She has mulled the lie most of all,
bitter nights of recriminations on her bunk,
visions of greed’s dismemberments--
the bloody sacrifices on false freedom’s altar.
Now in the sudden sunshine she dares to hope
(she had told herself she wouldn’t).
Perhaps today, she thinks, a reconciliation of rhetoric:
no more freedom’s mockery, but an anthem true
of freedom, of peace and prosperity, of equality for all.
They have found each other on the streets of Manila
already this morning, those who know to hope.
They may be laughing--
though these know first of all the crushing blow
of the American dream. The lie it has often been
is plain on these broken streets, these stained walls.
Yet still there is today, this day of hope, a chance for truth,
for fulfillment of the generational promise,
of freedom, and peace, and equality for all.
The expatriates gather in a Parisian cafe,
the artist, the business man, the wanderer,
the one in search of health care.
Over coffee and baguettes they laugh
at congratulations from those around them.
The owner brings them a bottle of syrah
on the house--”it is not too early for celebration, friends!”--
then murmurs confidentially
that he never thought to see such a display
of freedom, of peace and prosperity, of equality for all.
Somewhere on the Atlantic a merchant marine,
mop in hand, watches the emerald flash
of an ocean sunrise, and howls in triumph
to the whipping wind and the waves.
The captain watches from the tower, bemused,
knowing that were he a younger man
he would have joined the mop warrior in his whoop.
He thumbs instead through his old-fashioned captain’s log,
past notes on navigation and maintenance, takes his pen
and plots a few notes on a new course
(worthy if not seaworthy, he excuses himself)
of freedom, of peace and prosperity, of equality for all.
And now the sun comes to the Eastern shore,
to the lobsterman puttering to his pots
through the slate waters of the Maine coast,
to the poet staring out his window
into the ceaseless New York night,
to the kite surfer lofting off the North Carolina waves
into the silhouette air of the orange dawn,
to the runner breathlessly singing
on her tenth mile as she pounds along
the teal and coral serpentine of the Miami coast.
Together the Pennsylvania farmers walk to their barn
in the lowing dawn. They hold hands and look up
towards the glowing sky and towards some future
they have just now decided to believe in.
In Flint, the frame welder wakes, though not to work.
Her husband opens his eyes, too, and they look
at each other. They will refuse to brood at home
today, as they have done for months.
There is something to be done in the employ
of democracy. The single mother in New Orleans
thinks this too as she scoots her kids towards school;
she washes their breakfast dishes and looks at the desolation
through her sink window. Something’s about to change,
she thinks. And on a Kansas flat a fellow flies along
in an F-150 (a Ford man like his father and grandfather
before him) and flails his hat out the window and answers
the mop warrior’s shout. In Mississippi, there is a small
clapboard church already filled with song, with the called prayer,
with the Hallelujah Amen. An early hiker in Zion National Park
glances up as the sun hits the upper face of the shadowed canyon.
“‘Marching to Zion?’” he mutters, with a small smile. “Perhaps, perhaps.”
In Los Angeles she opens her curtains and sees a Good Samaritan
helping a stranger fix a flat, and she swears she hears some mountain echo
resounding in her living room. I may not get there with you,
but I want you to know tonight...”And this morning,” she adds in a small
voice...that we as a people will get to the Promised Land.
The Hawaiian dawn unfurls like an orchid, awakening
to the sweet sadness of a life-long lived and the happy rush
of offspring’s success.
We all, we Americans, we awake,
full aware of broken promises, of spent dreams,
of bent backs and hollow bellies.
We will no more resign ourselves
to these things, to the slipshod, to the sub-par,
to that which has always been.
We will sing a song, an ancient tune, anew
this morning, we will sing with new resolve
of freedom, of peace and prosperity, of equality for all.