I AM AN AMERICAN [1967]

   by Dick Bakken

                          I
I am an American, falling with America.
In my American home before dinner I hoo-ah!
with my neighbor during television: History
of the Great Society—You Are There. I am
America. I am what I do. I am whistling down
with America, with my neighbor, in splendor.

A Lakota chief ascends before me, proud,
though I have rampaged his land, his home,
though his braves are lost to my gewgaws
and whisky, though his people starve, though
he has no buffalo robe to tuck his only son,
the young chief, surely through our blizzards.

A Basuku warrior is rising before me, proud,
though I have plucked him from his land,
his home, though I ravish his lovely bride,
sell her to my neighbor, though my shackles
scrape pink rings around his dark ankles,
though I shave his fuzzy head to brand him.

A Nagasaki boy is rising before me, proud,
though I have combusted his land, his home,
though born without fingers, though his arms
do not reach his pants pockets, though his
claws cannot manage chopsticks, though his
father shockwaved out with half of Nagasaki.

A Hanoi farmer is rising before me, proud,
though I am de-blooming his land, his home,
though he gawks his father and his son leap
into a latrine ditch and huddle so tightly
while fire slips after them, hisses over the
lip, flares them up orange twisting into one,

though his old mother, his pregnant wife,
his young daughters, without rice have starved,
unable to survive on bark and roots, though
he only is left—and one other—no one knows
how or from where—a black-pajama girl, 12
years old, with a machine gun, a belt of bullets. 

                              II
In my American home, beefsteak and pudding.
I hear the death tally, Johnson’s assurance.
My slippered feet hush over the buffalo robe
that splashes the carpeted floor. I show off my
neighbor this headdress of peacock feathers
festooned as a curiosity on my wall. My hands

rest easily in my pockets. My wife hums the
cupboards are full of rice. My neighbor, the SAC
pilot, boasts B-52s float above sight and sound
fat with 75-meg godzilla bombs. He choruses
just a wee 50-meg dropped on Seattle will flash
the land there and past Tacoma to molten glass.

In my American home at bedtime I kamikaze
my laughing son into his crib and spasm the
cold, staring face of that little Lakota chief.
In my own bedroom, cooing, clucking, I flip
my wife’s feathery nightclothes to shudder—
staring from between her thighs the grimace

of the Basuku’s pretty woman. I rise dumbly
in the night, knock up the toilet lid to leak, gape
a single floating face of the Hanoi grandfather
and boy, staring. In the morning I motor up my
blinds to breathe-in the sun as such blazing
visage of the Nagasaki father flames in at me.

I am a 75-meg American falling with America
filled in shame and fire. Next to me my neighbor
falls quietly, next to him his neighbor. The sky
is so full of me and my falling. My neighbor
and I will fall in silence and strike the earth
together, blitzing it smooth as flowing glass.

Women and children burst everywhere. All tipis,
the grass huts, every pagoda explodes into stars.
Jets strafe each farmhouse, the villages, sparkled
rice paddies. So high above sight and sound,
I am an American, falling with America. The
sky is alive with my silent, splendorless falling.