You're immeasurably large, you're great, proud and whole,
Embracing with all your imperial soul
The American South; you greet me and mine
With such hospitality, Texas so fine!

Your paths and your roads are all straight and so long
Oíer vast and flat spaces of earth rich and strong...
Your cattle are many, your people are few...
Your spacious expanses a miracle true!

A bright yellow rose, you're a rich work of art,
Your people are known for their rich open heart...
You know you're not common -- you're greater by far,
You're Texas, the state of the one Lonesome Star!
 

America, en route across northern Texas
from Shamrock to Amarillo
2 May 2002

English translation © John Woodsworth
18 May 2002
 
 

 

In the year 1995 on the 19th day of April,
Right at 9.02 a.m., according to the word,
In one corner of the nation of the great American people --
In Oklahoma City -- a tragedy occurred!

On Fifth Street, near the centre, there stood a modern building:
A federal government complex, at least nine storeys tall.
So many people worked there -- professional men and women,
And people played there too, what with a day-care room and all.

But then some kind of madman, some person really crazy,
Apparently decided that such a life was wrong.
He senselessly determined, in a kind of angry frenzy,
To kill a group of children and some grown-ups with a bomb.

They say this was a crime of which no foreign foe was guilty,
There was no outside enemy to perpetrate this sin.
They say a plain American turned out to be the killer...
They should have paid attention to the enemy within.

A monument of epic size now marks those fateful seconds:
One hundred sixty-eight empty chairs show where the victims fell.
With Vimy-like simplicity each stranger's name they reckon...
And show how man can make his world a heaven or a hell.

That moment is forever held between two massive towers:
"9:01" and "9:03" displayed for all to know.
These 'gates of time' will let pass through their guarded days & hours
Only those measures now required to save us from the foe.

Who is our foe and where is he midst all the earth's dark places?
The murderer of freedom, truth and honour yet again?
The monument's reflecting-pool reveals our own dark faces:
The hate and enmity within are what must now be slain!

The foe within we must drive out to learn life's basic staples,
Resolve to settle wrongs no more through violence, vengeance, blood!
Such are the lessons taught us by this sad nineteenth of April:
Let us obey our God alone -- God Who Himself is Love!
 
 

America, en route across New Mexico, 2-3 May 2002,
after visiting (on 1 May) the memorial to the victims
of 19 April (1995) in Oklahoma City
 
 

English translation © John Woodsworth
18 May 2002

 

Another 'American' poem by JW, entitled Arizonskij son [Arizona dream] may be read on-line (in Russian only) on the Moskva neofitsial'naja site at:
http://www.in.msk.ru/rus/biblioteka/stihi/woodsw/005.shtml

Special note:  The Russian fonts used to display the poems above were designed by JW in the late 1980s, using the font editor "FonTastic" on an old 512K Macintosh computer.