Michael Finch wrote this poem a year ago; seeing the story on the looting of the trains in the rail yards of Los Angeles made us think of it again. We decided to share this short piece of his with our readers:
Whence America?
Heading northbound, the 170 Freeway, trash heaps and waste, fall down and pile high on roads embankment, tents and filth, human costs and destroyed lives, of illness, drugs and wasted dreams.
This is America?
This is greatness?
Global riches and coastal castles of wealth unseen since Rome’s finest of palaces, high upon hills of gold and towers gleaming over the Bay and harbors to the ends of earth, those eyes, hearts and souls gaze over the horizon with loyalties sailed off to faraway lands.
The revolt of the elites.
Spent lives, overdosed and buried in misery and ruin, long forgotten and none forgiven, a heartland once the citadel of power and might, the fortress, the big shoulders of the power of Atlas, of our might unchallenged, the arsenal of democracy, now discarded and shipped to a middle kingdom afar, new empires of fortunes, enriching few and for whose bidding?
This is America?
This is a fallen greatness.
Michael Finch is the President of the David Horowitz Freedom Center and the author of Finding Home, a book of poems. Write him at: michael@horowitzfreedomcenter.org.
This is my kind of poetry! Short and powerful; each well chosen word creating gentle yet vivid pictures in our minds
It’s unbearably sad that America is being throttled by the tyrannical hold of the few. Her people must rise up and take back the land from the predators and banish them to hell.