COLUMBIANA
Across the great desert, across the vast
field, 'midst rains and waves and waters all,
they kept coming. One after the first and a
million more for seconds - by such steps
a nation was made. Slathered in wooden
ships, tyrannical in sea-swept fury, buffeted
and killed by storms and sickness, nothing
but the arrival mattered. Little else; the end.
So many fragmented matters arrived, so
lost to little but time, aware of the oasis,
and ready to salute. 'Your teeming hordes'
seemed like nothing, really. Across the
New York streets, they stumbled, forlorn
and lonely, brave and stalwart : turning forces
into forces of what they turned. Hoodlums,
wastrels, gents and crooks. Or, to be more
precise, 'the other side of everything,
Greenhorn!' Columbiana is watching you.
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