I love America more than any other country in this world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.
--James Baldwin

I'm Not Loyal

I'm not loyal to this country;
I'm in love with this country.
I hear talk of being loyal to
the nation and to my ears it's
just a bunch of empty noise.
Isn't loyalty just one small
part of being in love? It goes
without saying. Just as it need
not be reiterated that real love
is tempestuous and difficult
and often a person can't tell
if his love isn't matched only
by his hate, his revulsion
at all the blood shed, all the bloody
greed, the sanctioned and esteemed
self interest. Sometimes it's crystal
clear, though: here is the place
where the world discovered itself
anew, where hopes ramble on for
countless miles, where what
you could be is bounded only
by unreachable horizons. If
I am guilty by association for
our history of inhumanity, I
must also be allowed to claim
all the other stuff we've given
the world as my own. From
cars to television, even to
the apocalypse, every one of us can
take credit for both the inventiveness
that brought us Sesame Street and
also the callousness which has
brought us to the brink of the end.
I'm only loyal in so far as I can
rage against the withering away of
all that is just; I cherish the country
of my birth only so far as I can try
to spit out the agony of 10,000
trodden-on heads and the hope that
the splendor of ten million untouched
acres of forest ushered in, the golden
dreams of the blindly ambitious
inventors and the bittersweet
memories of those who found
themselves here after watching
the entirety of their lives burned
to the ground. I can burn myself
to the ground over and over and
come out on the other side smiling
because poems are safe from
pyrotechnics, immune to the attacks
of even the most murderous among us.

(2007)