In Memoriam Lawrence Ferlinghetti – Three poems: Pity the Nation, Cries of Animals Dying, The History of the Airplane

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 conquerers

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

the people of the earth of every nation–

And my country, tears of thee

Sweet land of liberty!

 

— Lawrence Ferlinghetti

San Francisco, January, 2006

CRIES OF ANIMALS DYING

In a dream within a dream I dreamt a dream of all the animals dying out all animals everywhere dying & dying the wild animals the longhaired animals winged animals feathered animals clawed & scaled & furry animals rutting & dying & dying in shrinking rainforests in piney woods and high sierras on shrinking prairies & tumbleweed mesas captured beaten starved & stunned cornered and traded species not meant to be nomadic wandering rootless as man All the animals crying out in their hidden places slinking away and crawling away through the last wild places through the dense underbrush the last Great Thickets beyond the mountains crisscrossed with switchbacks beyond the marshes beyond the plains and fences (the West won with barbed-wire machines) in the high country in the low country in the bayous crisscrossed with highways

In a dream within a dream I dreamt of how they feed & rut & run & hide how the seals are beaten on ice f elds the soft white furry seals with eggshell skulls the great green turtles beaten & eaten exotic birds netted & caged & tethered rare wild beasts & strange reptiles & weird woozoos hunted down for zoos by bearded black marketers who afterwards ride around Singapore in German limousines with French whores

In a dream within a dream I dreamt a dream of all the earth drying up to a burnt cinder in the famous Greenhouse Effect under a canopy of carbon dioxide breathed out by a billion infernal combustion engines mixed with the sweet smell of burning flesh And all the animals calling to each other In codes we never understand The seal and steer cry out in the same voice the same cry The wounds never heal in the commonweal of animals We steal their lives to feed our own and with their lives our dreams are sown

In a dream within a dream I dreamt a dream of the daily scrimmage for existence in the wind-up model of the universe the spinning meat-wheel world about to consume itself And in a dream within a dream I saw how the bad breath of machines sickens earth and man and consumer culture eats earth and man and bottom-line capitalism masquerading as democracy rapes earth and man

But in a dream I dreamt a dream of how all the watershed people of the earth all the ethnic peoples of the earth all the disenfranchised people of the world the Mom-and-Pop people of America the youth of America and the poor of America would at last rise up and dismantle industrial civilization without killing anybody and save mankind from itself.

 

The History of the Airplane
A poem by Lawrence Ferlinghetti

And the Wright Brothers said they thought
They had invented something
That could bring peace on earth
If the wrong brothers didn’t get hold of it,
When their wonderful flying machine
Took off at Kitty Hawk
Into the kingdom of birds,
But the parliament of birds
Was freaked out by this man-made bird
And fled to heaven;

And then the famous Spirit of St. Louis
Took off eastward and flew across the Big Pond
With ‘Lindy’ at the controls
In his leather helmet and goggles
Hoping to sight the doves of peace
But he did not
Even though he circled Versailles;

And then the famous flying clipper took off
In the opposite direction
And flew across the terrific pacific
But the pacific doves were frighted
By this strange amphibious bird
And hid in the orient sky;
And then the famous flying fortress took off
Bristling with guns and testosterone
To make the world safe for peace and capitalism
But the birds of peace were nowhere to be found
Before or after Hiroshima;

And so then
Clever men
Built bigger and faster flying machines
And these great man-made birds
With jet plumage
Flew higher than any real birds
And seemed about to fly into the sun
And melt their wings
And like Icarus fall to earth.

And the Wright Brothers were long forgotten
In the high-flying bombers
That now began to visit their blessings
On various Third Worlds
All the while claiming
They were searching for the doves of peace;
And they kept flying
And flying and flying
Until they flew right into the 21st century;

And then one fine day
A third world struck back
And stormed the great planes
And flew them straight into
The beating heart of skyscraper America
Where there were no aviaries
Or parliaments of doves
And in a blinding flash
America became part
of the scorched earth
of the world;

And a wind of ashes
Blew across this land
And for one long moment in eternity
There was chaos and despair
And buried loves and voices
Cries and Whispers
Fill the air
Everywhere.

 

Following is the interview Pina Piccolo conducted with him by telephone on the occasion of his 90th birthday in 2009 http://www.pinapiccolosblog.com/interview-with-lawrence-ferlinghetti-2009/