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Taking the Century by the Throat
We swallowed it all: The zip haircuts, the 25-cent movies, the Sunday schools, The education, the need to beat the Russians in space. Most of all we absorbed the promiscuous beauty, The poetry our parents knew we should love: The pantheism of converted Puritans, Romantic land- and sea-scapes of fairytales, In rebellion, the leather attitudes and pop Buddhism, The confessed self-revelation and self-awareness, The antibiotics, psychedelics, and vaccines. We thought it all: Classical nobility, medieval faith, Humanism with its glorification of the body, Enlightenment, with its glorification of the mind. We have belonged to all parties on the great issues. We went to bed socialists and woke up on the supply side, Whispered with the dark intellectuals About anomie and the collapse of the West. We've crisscrossed America in jalopies, Been propositioned by strangers in California, Danced till dawn amid the sleek bodies of New York, Risen in alpine glades in the Rockies, And returned to become teachers, salespeople, and consultants. We've seen the world and it's seen us. It likes what it sees. It's only partly the appeal of a frayed affluence. We've fought for freedom, and if we've nourished bigotry, We vote and manage with a weary tolerance Generated by being a majority in opposition, Codified by the music and movies we still believe in. Now that we've half raised our children, Now that we hold mortgages on some big houses, Now that we run the Russian economy And China only waits for a few old men to die, We could become that gallant royalty, A band of the best minds, hopeful and generous, The true offspring of our warrior parents, The true reason two generations fought and died.