Massa's Mansion Burning Down

[Manila, 4/14/25]

Carlos Bulosan’s “I Want the Wide American Earth” begins:

Before the brave, before the proud builders and workers,
I say I want the wide American earth,
Its beautiful rivers and long valleys and fertile plains,
Its numberless hamlets and expanding towns and towering cities,
Its limitless frontiers, its probing intelligence,
For all the free.
                         Free men everywhere in my land—
This wide American earth—do not wander homeless,
And are not alone; friendship is our bread, love our air;
And we call each other comrade, each growing with the other,
Each a neighbor to the other, boundless in freedom.

That’s published in the April 1942 issue of Poetry. In the same issue are poems by Thomas Merton and William Meredith, the last mostly forgotten, though his superb translation of Apollinaire’s Alcools should be reissued. I fed off of it 40 years ago. Thank you, Mr. Meredith.

“Free men everywhere in my land,” Bulosan boldly declared, with everyone a comrade to each other. No one shall wander homeless, like so many millions are doing now in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Denver, Seattle, Portland, Phoenix, Honolulu, Manila, Cebu, Davao, Quezon and Angeles. These filthy and hungry bastards have all been fathered by an eternally horny and genocidal Uncle Sam, now so ably played by Donald Trump!