Here is a toast to a Happy New Year! And to us! All of us! That we may prosper and thrive throughout this year and every year to come. That we may be strong in health and gentle of heart. That we may once and for all make peace and save the earth, so that "Peace on Earth" rings true as crystal. That we may toast the future with hope.
As we look forward, this event-horizon New Year's Day, I give you a look back; to one of the Beat Generation's finest, one of our finest - - Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Painter, poet, publisher, and founder of San Francisco's legendary City Lights Books, he is commonly considered one of the greatest literary figures of the 20th century.
In September of 2007 Democracy Now! radio aired an interview with him, which you can now catch on their website. Ferlinghetti has never dropped the Beat...
Ferlinghetti: I’d like to read one poem that I just wrote. I really want to get this out.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 with 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.
