Poetic Last Days

Poet Oscar Wilde said, “Amer­i­cans went from bar­barism to deca­dence with­out civ­i­liza­tion in the mid­dle.” He wrote in the late nine­teenth cen­tury. His analy­sis of that day has become a long-term prophecy for ours too. It really was a short trip from pen­ni­less peas­ants to billionaires.

This coun­try has seen many things, but slow devel­op­ment is not one of them. We have seen social/political exper­i­ments come and go in decades that took other coun­tries cen­turies. No one saw the Inter­net com­ing — not even the sci­ence fic­tion writ­ers as late as the 1970’s. A world-wide com­mu­ni­ca­tion phe­nom­e­non has sprung from what was once just a mil­i­tary tool.

Was there ever an Amer­i­can civ­i­liza­tion? There have been a few things that were dis­tinctly Amer­i­can — like Dis­ney­land. John Wayne was one of ours. Bob Hope was born in Lon­don. When you look back far enough, there really were no abo­rig­i­nal peo­ple here. Maybe this was designed to be the “catch-all” coun­try. Toss a lit­tle bit of every­thing into the mix: saints, crooks, mis­sion­ar­ies, slaves, oppor­tunists, states­men, ban­dits, wan­der­ers, philoso­phers, huck­sters, builders, defend­ers, sci­en­tists, escapees, cir­cus clowns, pro­fes­sional politi­cians, inven­tors, gangs, writers — and a whole lot more — and you have Amer­ica. Heaven only knows how it works.

This is the week of the Fourth of July. We think we know what it is we are cel­e­brat­ing, but we prob­a­bly do not have a full appre­ci­a­tion of it all. I doubt if this coun­try can fully be defined — or ever will be. Maybe our “civ­i­liza­tion” is really just an on-going exper­i­ment. If it is in its last days (the fear that taunts each gen­er­a­tion), I sug­gest we turn to poetry instead of rev­o­lu­tion. Let us reflect in verse rather than wring our hands in regret. The spirit of Oscar Wilde may need to return to con­sole us. We can still love the coun­try that we do not understand.