Bowed by the weight of a promise, she stands
Stained steel, emerald copper tears, she remains aloof
Upon a vow and silent stare 'cross the sea
The outstretched arm of welcome hollow now, in the air
And upon her face the dread remorse, her burden the world






A fire that shines its Siren signal over an empty, toxic flame













Steadfast and silent, a sister to the people?
Who unchained and let down this lady's anguished call?
Whose was the hand that carved this message unspoken?
Who infused her brain, her thoughts into the minds of all?




















To whisper faint requests over sea and land;
To beckon the stars and the continents for treasure.
To feel the giddy certainty of all-powerful providence?
Is this the "tired" the "huddled" dream He dreamed
As he shaped her sandals and marked her place in destiny?


























Down, down the evil water ruptures through to the outer gulf
There is no wave more terrible than this -
More symbolic of their hate than we really know -
More filled with the wishes for ponies and pudding and white picket fences
More fraught with broken promises to the universe (but were they?)

What grand chasm of intention lay between him and his gift
His slavish labor of love, what to him
Are Penelope and the devoted Telemachus?
What long peales of intemperate song will pester his door,
The gift shop, the scope and sequence?
Through these impoverished eyes the dread scene appears;
Time's tragedy is not the faded green, but native-born betrayed
Children disinherited, disheartened, profaned,
Who scream a silent symphony in protest to the Courts of the World;
A prophecy that is also a plea.






O lords and lawmakers,
Is this the logic you build spaceships with
This distorted philosophy of more and more?
How will you ever recover this vision;
Will you touch it again with reverent ideology;
Peer upward through light and haze and vog;
Rebuild it with more than a dream and all-weather glaze?
O lords and lawmakers, how will it be after the silence of the centuries?