The Delusion of Greatness - A Poem For Our Times

 

The Delusion of Greatness

They say it once was great—this shining land

A beacon on the hill, pure and divine.

But blood has soaked its soil from birth to now

And smoke still rises from the buried past.

No greatness lies in shattered tribal bones

In treaties broken like a drunkard’s oath

In trails of tears that haunt the ancient woods—

Where once the eagle soared and spirits sang.

 

The land was taken not with grace or law

But fire and steel, disease and sharpened greed.

The nations here before almost erased—

They were destroyed with purpose, plan, and pride.

And still the myth endures—a false refrain—

That conquest bore some noble higher cause.

 

Yet greatness never rides on slavery’s back

Nor grows from children’s cries in iron chains.

The auction block, the lash, the branded flesh—

These are not stones fit for liberty’s shrine.

In cotton fields beneath the southern sun

Where breath was priced and freedom just a dream

A nation’s wealth was carved from human pain—

And still it dares to preach of liberty.

 

No greatness rises from a bomb’s descent

Or screams beneath a sky of foreign stars.

From Manila to Baghdad, blood has run—

This land has gorged on others’ broken lives.

 

When marchers dreamed of justice in the streets

They met the boot, the club, the jail, the gun.

A bullet silenced Martin’s sacred voice—

And still the lie persists, a poisoned root.

 

And yet, amid the wreckage, light remains—

In those who write, resist, create, and care.

The soul of any land is not its flag

But those who fight to make its promise real.

 

From Whitman’s verse to Baldwin’s burning pen

From O’Keeffe’s brush to Coltrane’s midnight cries

They dreamed a truer nation into song—

And countless hearts still strive to live that dream.