Bad News, Walt Whitman

It is ever more difficult
to sing of One's-Self.
The En-Masse
has swallowed up
the simple separate person;
the Democratic
is dying, if not dead.
The Leaves of Grass
now all look the same,
chant the same slogans,
believe and buy
what they are told
to believe and buy.
The power, pulse
and passion of Life
are subsumed
in blind conformity.
You said a man should,
"Resist much; obey little."
How many, in all this land,
now have the courage
to live those words?
That vast American energy
you rightly celebrated
is channeled now
to serve war and greed
and evil usury.
You would find little
in the current version
of The Modern Man
worth singing about;
little worth the immensity
of your vision and voice.
If you could return now
and chance to see
the empty, constricted husk
your country has become,
I wonder how Cheerful
your song would be.
  - mce