{"id":181989,"date":"2021-04-05T12:00:37","date_gmt":"2021-04-05T11:00:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=181989"},"modified":"2021-03-31T04:52:10","modified_gmt":"2021-03-31T03:52:10","slug":"pity-the-nation-after-khalil-gibran","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2021\/04\/pity-the-nation-after-khalil-gibran\/","title":{"rendered":"Pity the Nation (after Khalil Gibran)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><em>An Ode to USA<br \/>\n<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">Pity the nation whose people are sheep,<br \/>\nand whose shepherds mislead them.<br \/>\nPity the nation whose leaders are liars, whose sages are silenced,<br \/>\nand whose bigots haunt the airwaves.<br \/>\nPity the nation that raises not its voice,<br \/>\nexcept to praise conquerors and acclaim the bully as hero<br \/>\nand aims to rule the world with force and by torture.<br \/>\nPity the nation that knows no other language but its own<br \/>\nand no other culture but its own.<br \/>\nPity the nation whose breath is money<br \/>\nand sleeps the sleep of the too well fed.<br \/>\nPity the nation \u2014 oh, pity the people who allow their rights to erode<br \/>\nand their freedoms to be washed away.<br \/>\nMy country, tears of thee, sweet land of liberty.<\/p>\n<p><em>________________________________________________<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\"><em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/lawrence-ferlinghetti-bio.jpg\" ><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft wp-image-181990\" src=\"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/lawrence-ferlinghetti-bio-300x198.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"150\" height=\"99\" \/><\/a>Lawrence Monsanto Ferlinghetti (24 Mar 1919 \u2013 22 Feb 2021) was an American poet, painter, social activist, and the co-founder of City Lights Booksellers &amp; Publishers. He was the author of poetry, translations, fiction, theater, art criticism, and film narration.<\/em> <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Lawrence_Ferlinghetti\" >Wikipedia<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>An Ode to USA:<br \/>\nPity the nation whose people are sheep,<br \/>\nand whose shepherds mislead them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":181990,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[182],"tags":[1636,868,70],"class_list":["post-181989","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-poetry-format","tag-kahlil-gibran","tag-poetry","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181989","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=181989"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181989\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/181990"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=181989"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=181989"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=181989"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}