Not P but Beat: Lawrence Ferlinghetti Centennial Interview

[Ian Livingston]

Nice. I think it's not old, though. It appears here
http://www.citylights.com/Ferlinghetti/?fa=ferlinghetti_poems as part of a
cycle of new poems.

On Wed, Jan 9, 2019 at 5:58 AM Allan Balliett <allan.balliett at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Ferlinghetti has a new book coming out in March to commemorate his
> hundredth birthday. He talks about it, the state of American and the state
> of San Francisco, month other things here
> <
> http://www.documentjournal.com/2018/12/lawrence-ferlinghetti-on-the-old-san-francisco-his-new-novel-and-his-first-100-years/
> >
> .
>
> Here's an old poem of his, sorry, don't have the date, but it's probably
> from the Nixon-era, making it a deomonstrtion of Trump as a logical
> "evolution" of American politics, not a malignancy that appeared out of
> nowhere.
>
>
> “Pity the Nation” (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
> By 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!’
>
> -Allan in WV
> --
> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>