Uploaded October 2022 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago

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TWENTIETH – SELF-SATISFACTION

By P B Taylor

I

Describing a people who domesticated a wilderness
A country as its history illustrates rights wrongs
Pre-war Cambridge your base spring town at its best
Defined by cold daffodils nodding academically at St John’s

Pastoral beauty of the States in dying yellow fall
Such fruits of life as inventing a nation bear
Flatter contrast ability as an advocate’s recall
An intellectual expert on all American affairs

Along marching tide of history, the big country has shown
Drifts of revolution, ugly civil war and shifting uneasy peace
You dispatched throughout that America had grown
Small pauper to great spender, her powers begin to cease

And has that more abundant life forever gone away
From old America built in such a modern, logical way?

II

Expressive potent historic picture of an American life
In written portraits painted with masterful expertise
Observing disgraceful plight of first nation strife
Chats in green fields, companion to the breeze

Of the Seventies a continuing social decay
To wonder whether those philosophies are true
Two cars, a long swimming pool, becoming a way
Of life for middle class, smirking bourgeois depressed view

Increasing so many interminable problems to face
A discontented repugnance as black cotton seeds sown
Of black fireballs flare in night as money burnt in space
Few individuals sleep in a sleep isolated and alone

Once the then new Proud Republic knew where to begin
And yes, a liberty is the luxury of an own self-discipline

AC Harrogate September 1973