Opinion: America is still a work in progress

The American flag.

J. Scott Applewhite/AP

J. Scott Applewhite/AP

250 years in, and America is still a work in progress. Many American poets have written hymns and howls, declarations and outcries for this country that brims with so many people, and so many hopes, from all over the world.

“I Hear America Singing,” Walt Whitman wrote, in the 1850s.

“…the varied carols I hear,
Those of mechanics, each one singing his as it should be blithe and strong,
The carpenter singing his as he measures his plank or beam,
…The delicious singing of the mother, or of the young wife at work, or of the girl sewing or washing,
Each singing what belongs to him or her and to none else…”

Emma Lazarus’ “The New Colossus” was inscribed on the Statue of Liberty’s pedestal in 1903. It’s a poem in praise of immigrants who were cast out from other lands and found safe harbor in America.

“Give me your tired, your poor,” wrote Emma Lazarus.

“… your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

But Langston Hughes’ 1949 poem, “Freedom,” reminds us that many Black American families did not sail to America under the flame of a welcoming lamp, but were captive, shackled, to be sold into bondage. After the Emancipation Proclamation, many still endured segregation, bigotry and the constant threat of racist violence.

“I tire so of hearing people say, let things take their course,” wrote Langston Hughes.

“Tomorrow is another day.
I do not need my freedom when I’m dead.
I cannot live on tomorrow’s bread.”

This week, as the U.S. Supreme Court upheld birthright citizenship, you might read Shirley Geok-lin Lim’s 2017 poem, “Learning to Love America,” about how immigrants make America their own as they start families here.

“…because to have a son is to have a country,” she writes.

“…because my son will bury me here
because countries are in our blood and we bleed them”

The America great poets see is imperfect, unsettled, and unfinished, even after 250 years. Lawrence Ferlinghetti wrote in 1958 these words that still ring out:

“…I am waiting
for a rebirth of wonder
and I am waiting for someone
to really discover America”

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