Voices of the Prophet Poets
copyright Jamie Dedes
All day today visitors were flying to the original 2017 posting of these poems at The Poet by Day, my site. It?s not hard to guess what is driving interest in them. Here are the poems to ponder along with a word from Bernie: ?Trump promised to end endless wars, but this action puts us on the path to another one,? Sanders declared Thursday . . . He . . . framed it as a moment of moral gravity akin to the run-up to the Iraq War, not least because so much of the present conflict with Iran stems from the fateful intervention that began in 2003.? MORE Huffington Post
Lebanese-American poet, Khalil Gibran (1883?1931) public domain illustration
Pity The Nation? Khalil Gibran, 1933, The Garden of the Prophet
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 voicesave when it walks in a funeral,boasts not except among its ruins,and will rebel not save when its neck is laidbetween 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.
American poet, Lawrence Ferlinghetti (b. 1919), photo credit voxtheory under CC BY-SA 2.0 license
?PITY THE NATION?Lawrence Ferlinghetti (After Khalil Gibran) 2007
Pity the nation whose people are sheepAnd whose shepherds mislead themPity the nation whose leaders are liarsWhose sages are silencedAnd whose bigots haunt the airwavesPity the nation that raises not its voiceExcept to praise conquerorsAnd acclaim the bully as heroAnd aims to rule the worldBy force and by torturePity the nation that knowsNo other language but its ownAnd no other culture but its ownPity the nation whose breath is moneyAnd sleeps the sleep of the too well fedPity the nation oh pity the peoplewho allow their rights to erodeand their freedoms to be washed awayMy country, tears of theeSweet land of liberty!
copyright Lawrence Ferlingetti
Link HERE to listen to Lawrence Ferlingetti read his poem
Link HERE for more of Lawrence Ferlinghetti?s poetry
