These Yet To Be United States Poem by Maya Angelou

These Yet To Be United States

Rating: 4.9


Tremors of your network
cause kings to disappear.
Your open mouth in anger
makes nations bow in fear.

Your bombs can change the seasons,
obliterate the spring.
What more do you long for ?
Why are you suffering ?

You control the human lives
in Rome and Timbuktu.
Lonely nomads wandering
owe Telstar to you.

Seas shift at your bidding,
your mushrooms fill the sky.
Why are you unhappy ?
Why do your children cry ?

They kneel alone in terror
with dread in every glance.
Their nights ['rights' ? - Schrift nicht lesbar] are threatened daily
by a grim inheritance.

You dwell in whitened castles
with deep and poisoned moats
and cannot hear the curses
which fill your children's throats.

Saturday, January 17, 2015
Topic(s) of this poem: america
COMMENTS OF THE POEM
Maria Gonzalez 20 July 2015

Powerful, and precise...

18 0 Reply
* Sunprincess * 30 August 2015

....intense...and tough words for her homeland...great write ★

12 4 Reply
Vincent Bayer 29 January 2016

what a powerful social statement.

15 1 Reply
emma mcswain 11 May 2018

This is very much how the US is now people are so full of hate and just encourage it and see it as nothing but war

4 3 Reply
that one guy 10 February 2020

okay boomer

3 3
Anthonys 20 September 2020

As we know we hide for which we cling to we still abide

1 0 Reply
Dr Antony Theodore 17 June 2020

You dwell in whitened castles with deep and poisoned moats and cannot hear the curses which fill your children's throats. With deep and poisoned moats...... very fine and very expressive. tony

1 0 Reply
Bernard F. Asuncion 10 April 2019

One of the best powerful poems by Maya Angelou.... Onto my poem list........

2 2 Reply
Kevin Patrick 10 April 2019

While we are knowlonger living so close on the eve of destruction, the atom bomb is still the shadow of a noose that hangs around civilizations. Angelou does an amazing job contextualizing the fear and horror that this weapon does, in the hands of countries like America the world submits to terror at what these powers could unleash. A great choice for Modern poem of the day!

3 2 Reply
Kumarmani Mahakul 10 April 2019

The then picture of America is impressively inscribed.

1 1 Reply
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