Why, the Beloved Country (Daily Planet email #882)

We were looking for a poet to tell us what we wanted to hear. One who would tell our story, but a story in which we came out as the hero. A poet who could dress it up all fancy-like and make it seem plausible, even possible. We wanted a poet who would lie to us, nicely.

We raised them from children, asking second graders to write ten words to describe their country. We recruited scores of former Space Force cadets to grade the results on a grid of positive-to-negative sentiment and common-to rare-words. The youngsters from the positive-rare quadrant were chosen for Poetry Camp.

We wanted a forward-thinking poet who could look beyond what exists, into what should have happened. One with such enthusiastic and unearned confidence that they dared surmise what God was thinking when He alone created our nation. One who would help remind us of our country’s potential and help us forget about where it went. One who could make expansionism seem like destiny and craven self-regard appear noble. One who could enflame with a gerund and slay with a hyphen.

The prospects were rigorously trained. They weren’t allowed breakfast until they described the sunrise. We gave them performance-enhancing literature. Thursday was metaphor-only day. We exposed them to modernism, then drilled it the hell out of them. E’er we went o’er apostrophes. We had them examine odes to failed states, to encapsulate how not to do this. We tuned them like forks until their every consonance and assonance was a facet of our land’s just and mighty portrayal.

Did it all work out? Oh goodness no. After at last satisfying a belligerent Bureau of Idea Management, printing millions of copies on 60# glassine paper suitable for home framing, and having our top anchorperson read it nightly just before the weather, trouble struck. Somebody, a clever person who is gone now, held it up to the metaphoric light just so and found a second meaning. The poet had betrayed us using the very words we had loved! The Nation had, in full, memorized its love song and now was laid low by a homonym and a slant rhyme. We closed the program immediately. The Poetry Campers were dispersed to various detasseling stations across the heartland and we put all the money back into gyroscopic technology for missile guidance.