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# California’s Ferlinghetti: America’s Conscience
April 03 2017
Written by Abby Zimet.
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GUEST WORDS--A belated 98th birthday to California’s Lawrence Ferlinghetti, indefatigable [poet,](http://www.commondreams.org/further/2017/04/02/%20https%3A/www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poets/detail/lawrence-ferlinghetti) bookseller, anti-Fascist, First Amendment activist, environmentalist, publisher, painter, creator of community, patron saint of the Beat artists, Poet Laureate of San Francisco, living monument to the arts, "old-ass anarchist" and dazzlingly prescient speaker of truth whose City Lights bookstore has served as a beacon of enlightenment, creativity and resistance since the 1950s.
Ferlinghetti inspired the 2009 [documentary](http://www.commondreams.org/further/2017/04/02/%20https%3A/www.fandor.com/films/ferlinghetti_a_rebirth_of_wonder) "A Rebirth of Wonder," he titled his 2013 collection of [poems](http://www.commondreams.org/further/2017/04/02/%20http%3A/www.interviewmagazine.com/culture/lawrence-ferlinghetti#_) "Time of Useful Consciousness" for the vital moment a pilot is aware of coming disaster and can still act, and he is working on a stream-of-consciousness [memoir](https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/26/fashion/a-literary-bromance-now-in-its-sixth-decade.html?_r=0) he likes to [call ](http://www.npr.org/2015/06/11/410487944/at-96-poet-and-beat-publisher-lawrence-ferlinghetti-isnt-done-yet)"Portrait of the Artist As An Old Red."
In a riff on Gahlil Kibran's "Pity the Nation," Ferlinghetti [wrote h](https://www.democracynow.org/2007/9/3/legendary_beat_generation_bookseller_and_poet)is own searing [version ](https://wn.com/lawrence_ferlinghetti_pity_the_nation)ten years ago; it could be today. Likewise prophetically, he began his 2007 prose book, "Poetry as Insurgent Art," with, "I am signaling you through the flames." They continue to rise. May he, too.
*Pity the Nation*
*“Pity the nation whose people are sheep,*
*and whose shepherds mislead them.*
*Pity the nation whose leaders are liars, whose sages are silenced,*
*and whose bigots haunt the airwaves.*
*Pity the nation that raises not its voice,*
*except to praise conquerors and acclaim the bully as hero*
*and aims to rule the world with force and by torture.*
*Pity the nation that knows no other language but its own*
*and no other culture but its own.*
*Pity the nation whose breath is money*
*and sleeps the sleep of the too well fed.*
*Pity the nation — oh, pity the people who allow their rights to erode*
*and their freedoms to be washed away.*
*My country, tears of thee, sweet land of liberty.”*
― Lawrence Ferlinghetti
***(Abby Zimet*** *has edited CD's *Further* column since 2008. A longtime, award-winning journalist, she moved to the Maine woods in the early 70s, where she spent a dozen years building a house, thinning the carrots, hauling too much water, experiencing true if ragged community, and writing. This perspective was posted originally at [Common Dreams.](http://commondreams.org))*
*-cw*
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