After what has been happening these last few months in American politics, I think this poem is all too appropriate.
Pity the Nation by Lawrence Ferlinghetti
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 airways
Pity the nation that raises not its voice
but aims to rule the world
by force and by torture
And knows
No other language 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 of my country
My country, tears of thee
Sweet land of liberty!
In 2007, near the end of George W. Bush’s presidency, protest poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti (1919 – 2021) wrote this poem to show what he felt was wrong about his nation, America. It was also a response to Kahil Gibran’s Pity the Nation, published as part of his 1933 The Garden of the Prophet. Gibran’s poem was about Pakistan.
Ferlinghetti was one of the Beat poets and had grown up in the San Francisco area, protesting often against the Vietnam War and other topical issues and seeing himself as a “philosophical anarchist”.
The poem attacks the country’s inability to accept alien customs and people, it displays a horror of bigots and leaders who have damaged other nations, and shows the lack of empathy of those who are well fed for those who have little. Ferlinghetti shows paradoxes in his poem – bullies are not heroes, sheep that follow blindly are desperately in need of a wise shepherd. He depicts people who believe what they want to believe and see only what they want to see.
Ferlinghetti felt that poetry was a vital medium for protest and he often encouraged other poets to use their words to make social and political complaints. It worried him that each new generation seemed all too ready to accept the status quo it had been handed.
You can listen to this poem, read by Kirk Lawrence-Howard:
Or, here read by Richard Henzel:
Have you enjoyed this poem? I’d love to know what you think, let me know by leaving a comment.
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Peter Windeyer
I am a great fan of the philosophy of Khalil Gibran. I have not heard of Lawrence Ferlinghetti before, but he is also a thinker by the message in his poem. It is interesting that the political “leaders” of the world appear to be the same as they were 100 years ago. The old adage of “5% of people think, 10% think they think and 85% will do anything else but think” is alive and well! Is that the reason for where politics is where it is over and over again? Thank you Susannah, for this thought provoking poem.