Writers against the silence

The challenge to the Bush/Ashcroft Kulturkampf by 15 of our best known writers at Cooper Union got big play in EL PAIS on Sunday. Meanwhile, I share this, from Sophia Niarchos, who writes that it was "My favorite reading at the PEN event last night" -- yet another sign of the vigor of writerly protest. Sophia adds, "we should read poetry every day!" And "Though seeing it in writing is better than not experiencing it at all, the reading of it (staccato, fast-paced, out of breath!) made it extraordinary!"

I Am Waiting

By Lawrence Ferlinghetti

I am waiting for my case to come up
and I am waitingfor a rebirth of wonder
and I am waiting for someone
to really discover America
and wail
and I am waitingfor the discovery
Of a new symbolic western frontier
and I am waitingfor the American Eagle
to really spread its wings
and straighten up and fly right
and I am waiting for the Age of Anxiety
to drop dead
and I am waitingfor the war to be fought
which will make the world safe for anarchy
and I am waiting for the final withering awayof all governments
and I am perpetually awaitinga rebirth of wonder
I am waiting for the second coming
And I am waiting
For a religious revival
To sweep thru the state of Arizona
And I am waiting
For the grapes of wrath to be stored
And I am waiting
For them to prove
That God is really American
And I am waiting
To see God on television
Piped into church altars
If they can find
The right channel
To tune it in on
And I am waiting for the last supper to be served again
and a strange new appetizer
and I am perpetually awaitinga rebirth of wonder
I am waiting for my number to be called
and I am waiting
for the Salvation Army to take over
and I am waitingfor the meek to be blessed
and inherit the earth
without taxes
and I am waiting
for forests and animals
to reclaim the earth as theirs
and I am waitingfor a way to be devised
to destroy all nationalisms
without killing anybody
and I am waiting for linnets and planets to fall like rain
and I am waiting for lovers and weepers
to lie down together again
in a new rebirth of wonder
I am waiting for the great divide to be crossed
and I am anxiously waitingFor the secret of eternal life to be discovered
By an obscure practitioner
and I am waitingfor the storms of life
to be over
and I am waiting to set sail for happiness
and I am waiting
for a reconstructed Mayflower
to reach America
with its picture story and TV rights
sold in advance to the natives
and I am waitingfor the lost music to sound again
in the Lost Continent
in a new rebirth of wonder
I am waiting for the day
that maketh all things clear
and I am waiting for retribution
for what America did to Tom Sawyer
and I am waitingfor the American Boy
to take off Beauty's clothes
and get on top of her
and I am waitingfor Alice in Wonderland
to retransmit to me
her total dream of innocence
and I am waitingfor Childe Roland to come
to the final darkest tower
and I am waiting for Aphrodite to grow live arms
at a final disarmament conference
in a new rebirth of wonder
I am waitingto get some intimations
of immortality
by recollecting my early childhood
and I am waiting
for the green mornings to come again
for some strains of unpremeditated art
to shake my typewriter
and I am waiting to write
the great indelible poem
and I am waitingfor the last long rapture
and I am perpetually waiting
for the fleeting lovers on the Grecian Urn
to catch each other at last
and embrace
and I am awaiting
perpetually and forever
a renaissance of wonder

Sophia A. Niarchos