(An Aria a la Whitman)
I sing the American Broadway;
I sing the avenue democratic;
I sing the way winding past trailers and mansions,
Equally inviting to aluminum siding and Grecian facade,
Past exurbs and cracked city streets and trees and public malls and libraries and video arcades and civic halls and esplanades,
Through deserts vast and plains wide, by the crowded tenement and the fields empty or dotted with cows,
I sing the rainbow way,
The thousand-hued bricks,
The cascading millions marching on.
I sing the common tongue,
Bouncing off cobblestones and skyscrapers,
Running with the river and sailing through the air.
I sing the voice–do you hear it, echoing from every patch of sky?
Do you hear its words–its words binding together the thousand tongues of the land?
Do you hear the common tongue, built upon generations?
Do you hear that brawny, limber, marvelous tongue,
Spoken by presidents and prostitutes, poets and politicians,
Uttered by dreamy students and dreamy aged, falling from the lips of millionaires and destitutes,
Resound with the pound of hammer and jingle of coin and by the piano tinkling?
Do you hear those words, spanning oceans?
Do you hear their Anglo-Saxon heft, their Latinate acclaim?
Do you hear it, infused with the words sown by countless nations and peoples?
Do you hear that language of resistance–
Do you feel it even now–perched upon your lips?
I hear the drums of America–
The six hundred million feet–
The pulsing engines
Of cars, of planes, of factories,
The ringing battalions of cash registers,
The whirl of the computer, the billions of mouseclicks,
The roar of the combine harvester, the sweat dropping to the ground from the heavy brow of the bent-backed laborer.
I hear the pulse of America,
I hear its dying rattle,
I hear the start of blood in the morn;
I hear the cries of babes streaking the purpled sun.
I believe in the virtue of you, my countryman,
I believe in your brawny smile, in your tempered step,
I believe in the variety of your virtues and the virtue of
your varieties.
And I believe in our common birthright,
And I believe in our glorious responsibilities.
And I hail you–equally my brother–whether they call you
black, blue, brown, red, white, or yellow.
I hail you my brothers and sisters sea-to-sea,
I hail you my kin, knit in the web spinning onward,
I hail you and embrace you–our common callouses touch in handshake–
And a good man’s good work does not worsen him.
And the tomato-picker and bed-maker are no less worthy of their citizenship–not one jot–than a stockbroker’s son.
And the bounds of sea and land do not cheapen true fellowship.
I sing America,
The happy-eyed,
I sing not, “After me, the deluge,”
But after me,
The children, the laughter, the music, the fireworks!
I sing the yearly renewal–the tri-colored flash on a babe’s smiling chin–
I sing the ongoing generations, the growth of years,
I sing the hope of endurance and the new dawn.
I sing you, America–
Oh wild promise!–
My lips almost stuttering–
I sing on the wings of hope–
Oh wild enthusiasm!–
I sing your endurance–
As a flag rippling rides the wind.
I sing the wind and sun–
I sing the coursing currents
That sweep from star to star and land to land!
I sing the warmth and wave
That awaken the heart and tumble our lungs.
