So Say Goodbye, It's Independence Day

So I'm in the Bookshop Santa Cruz, and buy a California travel guide titled "Coastal California", and it turns out to be an excellent tome that will come in very handy for me and My Accordeon, because it contains lots of information I knew nothing about, like the entry about a house in Carmel, Tor House, built by "California poet Robinson Jeffers". I'd never heard of man nor mansion. Look him up on the Plagiarist (still one of my favorite poetry sites), and there is "July Fourth By The Ocean":

The continent's a tamed ox, with all its mountains,
Powerful and servile; here is for plowland, here is for park and playground, this helpless
Cataract for power; it lies behind us at heel
All docile between this ocean and the other. If flood troubles the lowlands, or earthquake
Cracks walls, it is only a slave's blunder or the natural
Shudder of a new made slave. Therefore we happy masters about the solstice
Light bonfires on the shore and celebrate our power.
The bay's necklaced with fire, the bombs make crystal fountains in the air, the rockets
Shower swan's-neck over the night water.... I imagined
The stars drew apart a little as if from troublesome children, coldly compassionate;
But the ocean neither seemed astonished nor in awe:
If this had been the little sea that Xerxes whipped, how it would have feared us.

Have a good Independence Day, everybody! Be independent.

Comments

[Greg]

I became a member of the Accordeon Club yesterday. A lovely 2005 EXL. Yea.

[Elke Sisco]

Yeah, but do you have the requisite bumper sticker?

Gave up on your Explorer? What happened?