PFJChow.com : My Poetry Lodge

O this our land!
(A Tribute to Katherine Lee Bates’ "America, The Beautiful !")

Mount Rushmore

O this our land! Divine guidance
For one of God’s grand schemes,
Blessed with Providence’s abundance,
Exceeds the Pilgrims’ dreams!
America, America -
Earth’s Eden by two seas,
From Pacific to Atlantic,
This land’s for you and me!

O this our land! Liberty stands
Where freedom bells still ring;
Peopled by men from different lands,
One voice to thee we sing:
America, America,
We stand united as one,
And will safeguard, with all our hearts,
This land that freedom’s won!

O this our land! For great purpose,
For government ideals,
Of and By and For the people,
Our Constitution reveals!
America, America,
We firmly stand by thee
We’re free to speak, our lives we seek
In this land of the free!

O this our land! For country strong,
That’s guarded us through the years,
To protect our land against wrong
And keep us free from fears!
America, America,
See how our flag still wave,
We will ensure it will endure
As banner of the brave!

O this our land! Equality –
The common thread to bind
Our mosaic cultures tapestry,
Bright beacon to mankind.
America, America,
Let’s walk in brotherhood,
With tolerance, not ignorance,
To find our common good!

O this our land! May God’s grace flow
To all who honor Him,
Free to worship to our faiths show
With different songs and hymns!
America, America,
Adore we God the same,
We respect all and free to call
One God by different names!

O this our land! For clear lakes blue,
That mirror endless skies;
For great rivers, prairie plains true,
Green forests, mountain highs!
America, America,
May God keep watch on us
And guide our hand to use this land,
Preserve her and we must!

© November 2001, Paul F.J. Chow
This poem first appeared in the 2002 Winter issue of the AIM magazine

[ Author's note: Throughout human history, we have engaged in all sorts of warfare, out of necessity to control natural resources such as water, arable lands or cheap labor. We engaged in empire building, colonizing and subjugating other people for cheap labor and even to exterminate an “inferior race”. As we evolved as a species, our general intellect began to catch up with our common humanity; the “better angel of our human nature” begins to triumph over our base instincts to conquer, to subjugate and to discriminate. It has been a long road and we still have not fully arrived there yet. But in order for us to survive as a species in this vast cosmos we call universe, and to share the limited resources on this mother ship we call Earth, we must learn to cooperate, to assist and to conserve to stay afloat, or we will all sink together.

The US constitution and the Declaration of Independence exemplify the ideals of our human intellect. In the beginning, during the infancy of this nation, these were just pretty flourishes of words on a piece of parchment paper worth a few pennies. In reality, we have seen inequalities, discriminations and outright atrocities practiced by the US government upon its citizenry in blatant betrayal of the constitution, due in part to complacency, apathy and the political convenience of the circumstances. Here are some of the examples:

It was mainly through the efforts of common citizens, people such as Martin Luther King, Jr., Elizabeth C. Stanton and John Greenleaf Whittier, to name a few, to touch the conscience and to reawake the slumbering spirit of the constitution in the general public. In other words, we cannot trust our elected officials to do the right thing, to automatically pass laws to enforce the constitution. Some politicians, if not all, will seize every opportunity by resorting to demagoguery, plausible rhetoric and the exclusion of “the others” to advance their grasp of power. Others, for political convenience or expediency, will bend the constitution to suit their needs.

“A tyrant will always find a pretext for his tyranny”, so goes an Aesop fable. To paraphrase the above, a demagogue will always find a pretext for his demagogueries to abnegate the constitution. To prevent these abuses in our government and to hold our elected officials to the letter of the constitution, we must educate the general public to the true spirit of our constitution, especially the young. It is in this spirit I dreamed up this little ditty, a la Katharine Lee Bates, to celebrate this crowning glory of our founding fathers and to help younger generation better remember the true essence of our constitution. ]