<While this America settles in the mould of its vulgarity, heavily thickening
to empire

And protest, only a bubble in the molten mass, pops and sighs out, and the
mass hardens,

I sadly smiling remember that the flower fades to make fruit, the fruit rots
to make earth.

Out of the mother; and through the spring exultances, ripeness and decadence; and home to the mother.

You making haste haste on decay: not blameworthy; life is good, be it stubbornly
long or suddenly

A mortal splendor: meteors are not needed less than mountains:
shine, perishing republic.

But for my children, I would have them keep their distance from the thickening
center; corruption

Never has been compulsory, when the cities lie at the monster's feet there
are left the mountains.

And boys, be in nothing so moderate as in love of man, a clever servant,
insufferable master.

There is the trap that catches noblest spirits, that caught – they say –
God, when he walked on earth.



As the sand in the hourglass runs down, and the Grim Reaper gets ready for harvest time in Iraq, I think of the poetry of Robinson Jeffers, and of the poet himself: a difficult man, serenely alienated from the world of his time, whose poems echo down through the years like the voice of some forgotten prophet who got it all right. Too right. Bitterly opposed to World War II – in describing his President, he wrote of "the cripple’s power need of Roosevelt" – Jeffers’ bitterness was turned into a thing of beauty when he put pen to paper:

say hello to the American empire

It seems odd to me in that the author would choose this 60 year old poem to accent an anti-war piece. The poet opposed our entry into WWII and slandered FDR as a power hungry cripple.

I thought it was a perfect example of how wrong dessenters can be.