I have died in Viet Nam but I have walked the face of the moon.
I have befouled the waters and tainted the air of a magnificent land but I have made it safe from disease.
I have flown through the sky faster than the sun but I have idled in streets made ugly with traffic.
I have littered the land with garbage but I have built upon it 100 million homes.
I have divided schools with my prejudice but I have sent armies to unite them.
I have beat down my enemies with clubs but I have built courtrooms to keep them free.
I have built a bomb to destroy the world but I have used it to light a light.
I have outraged my brothers in the alleys of the ghettos but I have transplanted a human heart.
I have scribbled out filth and pornography but I have elevated the philosophy of man.
I have watched children starve from my golden towers but I have fed half the earth.
I was raised in a grotesque slum but I am surfeited by the silver spoon of opulence.
I live in the greatest country in the world in the greatest time in history but I scorn the ground I stand upon.
I am ashamed but I am proud. I am an American.
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4 comments:
This was published in (I believe) Playboy in the early 1970s, and I read it then as a teenager and I still think it encapsulates the contradictions of the United states, its hoes and despairs more concisely and completely than any other poem I have seen. After 35 years it still resonates.
I have been looking for this poem for years. I read it in Newsweek or Time in the 1970's. I know it wasn't Playboy because I read it in a public library and I was a teenager. Thanks so much for publishing it again. I have missed it.
In the early 1970s some organization, maybe an advertisers group, sponsored a contest challenging ad agencies to advertise something besides a product. This was the winner, submitted by McManaus, John & Adams in Bloomfield, Michigan. I have had a framed copy on my wall ever since.
This poem was included in my junior high school yearbook in 1975. I remember reading it then during the bicentennial and thought how appropriate it was. Through the miracle of technology I was able to find it on this site by the last line (remembered as "I am proud, I am ashamed, I am American." ) I've just now read it for the first time in 50 years (!) as the demiquincentennial is upon us, and once again appreciate its appropriateness. Happy 250th, everyone! The future awaits. If this once brilliant country ever gets its act together maybe by the tricentennial our descendants will read this and think, "I didn't know they had all those problems back then!!"
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