Statue of Liberty

They have a point, they do, our lady friends
Who’re beady-eyed to right the wrongs they say
That men have done to womankind in times
Now past. Our best known prayer, Our Father,
And His credentials in the Holy Book,
His procreative ventures with a girl,
Disguised as dove—but Zeus and Leda come
To mind (they do)—do quite support the vague
Suspicions one might dimly hold even
Before one laid aside Ms. Friedan’s work.

But they are wrong to try to make some room
For women in a stall of Augias.
We must embrace a Spirit more…somehow…
More fundamental, liberating, sane.

The French divined— they’re always first, you know—
Just how America should view its genesis.
Land of our fathers? Non. A statue they
Dispatched to these our shores, a modern sort
Of spiritual Trojan horse—a mare,
A higher Goddess for this land of
Liberty. And they erected this our
Lady looking out to sea to Europe—
From where we came with many others to
Live our lives beneath her spacious skies.

We speak of Freedom, Liberty, but we’ve
Degraded this once lofty Spirit and
Now she serves to keep our markets free—and
Speech—the last now turned into a kind of
Wild debauch of talk and ample waves of
Porn. Perhaps in future a new breath of
Courtesy shall once again awaken
Her to active functioning, and then our
Land might seek a lofty goal—beyond just
Office, greed, brief fame, celebrity.