[To the extent that poetry enters public space for general consumption, it’s a strand in the fabric of media, however small its volume. Where there is media, there is propaganda – the life-blood of empire, the death-blood of those who believe it. In the US, media emanating from large corporations and federal government is largely synonymous with propaganda. ‘The Gift Outright’, written by Robert Frost in 1942 and recited by him in 1961 before a national audience at JFK’s presidential inauguration, is a devastating example of poetry as media propaganda.

Why? Because the poem embodies and promotes false belief and odious sensibilities, but was granted wide broadcast and official approval by inclusion in a state ceremony of high solemnity – precisely for having these qualities, no doubt. Neither does the poem’s artistic value considered apart from its message commend itself. If you wish to perpetuate, however, the hideous lies that form the foundation myth of the US, and ingratiate yourself to an illegitimate ruling class, the poem might be useful; and so it was.

Standing on the bully pulpit of the world in the dead of winter, Frost began by reading the opening lines of something called ‘Dedication’, a truly abominable poem. Thankfully, the natural elements of that January day – the snow’s cold glare, the sun’s icy stare, the chill wind – frosted the old man’s eyes, forcing him to abort the text. He segued glibly into ‘The Gift Outright’, which he could say without seeing. The poem below is a rebuttal to that specious, meretricious moment in the annals of state-sponsored poetry by someone born later, whose dedication is to art rather as a medium of truth, liberation, enlightenment.]

The land was never ours, nor were we the land’s.
We stole the land, then called the land
our own in excess of a hundred years
before we were in any sense its people;
yet hardly now are we a people it deserves.

Would Europeans ever share fair
and precious Europe with invaders,
profaners of Iberia, Brittany, Wales –
only to be robbed outright of a continent
and all its culture, and forced to march many
trails of tears to reservations beyond the Urals?

Thieves intent on stealing scruple not
to count their foul before it hatch,
if hatch they deem it will. So we who were
but colonists from another world
called the land our own, possessing little
sense of reciprocity, unpossessed
of almost any sense of fairness
toward other people, though then possessed
of what we now possess in spades:
arrogance grotesque.

Something we were withholding made us weak.
Love, perhaps, for other people
in the twisted cockles of our heart?
Honesty, compassion? But till we found
a way to draw it out, to pillory and flog
the inconvenient weakness, we could do
nothing but withhold ourselves; could not
convert the land of get-rich-quick
to easy lucre – not before making it
a ruthless land of Ind’an massacres
and removal. Then, lord-be-praised,
we found salvation in deception,
deceiving ourselves beyond salvation.

The first and final casualty,
a legacy lasting centuries,
in policies of extermination:
the self-cannibalized heart of the crazed
policy-driven people.

Such as we were, yes, we quite gave ourselves
outright to the land, manifesting ourselves
westward, giving the gift the West
is so adept at giving: untold death
and centuries of war to a New World,
so unencumbered, so guileless, so undefiled,
such as it was, such as it would never be again.

little big pine
los angeles county
delta aquarids, july 2006

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