Ode to America, a poem by andrew taylor, 06/10/14

An Ode to America, a poem by   © andrew taylor

that Puritan quest for a pure new church in a pure new land
invented you
pale child Anglo-colonial America.

Here "the Saints of New Israel" proclaimed "a city set upon a hill" "a beacon unto the nations"
Annuit Coeptis
(Cotton Mather, the USD inter  alia, oh please read your history, lazy America!).

And now as the once Republic 
fratres inter fratres
e pluribus unum
suffers its final slender imperial lengths
I look with wonder into your internal ceaseless agitation,

the narrowing gyres that circle the drain:
an America in the 21st century a whirlpool oligarchy
swallowing democracy;

E-America once a blade of liberty 

you rose like a day star

Shining promise

Even after Slave-state

After The Trail of Tears
 
honed on a pedal-stone Mack the Knife, 

You sit down and pedal and the big wheel slowly evolves
 
another glinting murder, a new invasive turn ;

Cyber-America, O restless America trapped in endless cycle of anger, 
sect-birthings, transformation, splitting, and re-formations, 

America you've birthed a lion's share of the globe's 23,000 denominational splits worldwide, 
but produced only 2 prevailing political parties;

Great is America no longer, for on her forehead a name is written: A mystery: 
Not
Novus Ordo Seclorum 
but 
"Babylon magna mater fornicationum et abominationum terrae."