[In 1865 Walt Whitman wrote the poem ‘O Captain! My Captain!’ in response to the assassination of President Lincoln by a person of little understanding and much hate. In response to the Bush Administration’s assassination of its own country, and others besides, likewise stemming from ignorance and contempt, albeit of and for the world, I thought it fair to rescore the poem with the sentiment reversed.]

Capsizer, cursed capsizer, your fearful reign is done. Incredibly
you dodged belated mutiny and sought the prize you won: the ship is sunk,
lost at sea; pirate crews with bags of loot run free. Now as you sidle
from the scene: behold a world of wrack and ruin, your eight-year killing spree.

But O dear heart of life and limb,
O bleeding drops of blood,
where round the world my people lie
cold and in the mud.

Capsizer, cursed capsizer, your fearful reign is done. Hang you,
your head, replete with shame, stunningly dishonest; feel you no contrition
for all you’ve done – lies and wars and broken laws, cowardly renditions?
For you I mourn, for you I weep that government grew so wicked.

Alas capsizer, wretched man,
this mirror to your face
shows you are alive and well,
the cruelest twist of fate.

Capsizer, cursed capsizer, your fearful reign is done. Unwitting
soldiers in the thousands killed, lives and limbs truncated; civilians
in the millions dead, fled and maimed and orphaned; cultures old as Ur
outrageously mistreated; whole countries schooled and steeped in violence.

Grieve and toll, O shores and bells:
the crimes are high, they dwarf the man
and implicate a nation, whose very core
quite deserves unflinching condemnation.

little big pine
southwest us
november 2008

Little Big Pine: citizen, patriot, poet; may be reached at littlebigpine@gmail.com.