I Accuse Us
Earle Birney
O.K. so the U.S. is the only country
to move “from barbarism to decadence
without achieving civilization”
so where does that leave us?
what’s with us supernorthamericans
who never had the guts
to be either barbaric or decedant?
are we what the Yanks have fostered
instead of a civilization?
Hail! five hundred years
of near-beer British
& sour-wine French
united in budding Unamerica
without speaking to each other
(also Farewell! twenty thousand years
of Indians & Eskimaux
& the creatures they lived with)
Sure we’re well into our second century
of–well–not quite parasitism
& not quite independence
Hell! fellow-hitchhikers
on the limousines of empires
It’s been fast smooth riding
but where are we heading?
If we have to be fleas
leaving a dead lion
why choose a sick eagle?
Why not a healthy sheep?
or really live it big:
think rape & hunt for elephants?
Sorry, I forgot, we are Canadians
we are the quiet reasoning folk
the blessed peacemakers in fact
who shall inherit
the radioactive earth
Balls! as neutrals
we’re about as phony as they come
We are the experts in waging
neither-war-nor-peace
while making up our Canamind
We are the boys who put delegates
on the United Nations’ commission
to keep peace in Vietnam
& secretely told them
not to report the shiploads of arms
the U.S. unloaded weekly in Saigon
We are the owners of the biggest swatch
of “undeveloped resources” in the world
(i.e., uncut trees, ungouged earth,
unkilled fish, unscalped animals,
unsoiled beaches & unblasted rock)
all of which we are hot to undo
if only our capital wasnt tied up
making more explosives to export
for wars abroad than we use at home
for our kind of peace
Yes sir we’re the biggest seller
of napalm & phosphorous
the U.S. ever had
though of course we howl
every week on television
when the bastards drop it all
on the Asians
Dont think we havent got a conscience
Who sent a whole children’s hospital
to South Vietnam? O sorry no
that was the British our doctors
werent allowed to sew new eyelids & skin
on little gooks that get in the road
of free enterprise by CIL (Canada)
For Christ’s or Buddha’s sake or for our Own
let’s face us as others do
Even the Americans who’ve escaped to us
from the earth’s most prosperous
& brutal superstate,
the unartful dodgers mistaking
our inaction for bravery
& our ambiguities for freedom,
find our uniqueness lies
in “dynamic apathy”
Hell Vietnam was just a symptom
we’ve got the disease!
When the Greek army’s fascists
murdered Greek democracy
who at once assured the generals
they’d get a loan?
Yep that was Canada my fellow Ca-nadas
that was the frecklecheeked kid sister
beating Big Brother to it
Tomorrow it’ll be our turn
to help somebody else
help kill more Jews & Arabs
or sit firm in words for both sides
while the real Africans stand up
to be shredded down
It’s us I accuse you me
of failure to become something else
than a dozen separatisms
united only by common war
on its own central government
& by common exploitation
of its poor by its rich
I accuse us
of failure to become a nation–
a nation neither White Red Black Brown or Pink,
but its own Rainbow,
a nation seeking internationalhood
not another empire, a Soul,
a Human Presence, capable of pity
as well as self-holiness
I accuse us
of celebrations without cause,
of standing, not moving
in passionate urgency
towards the real civilization
there may just be time
to glimpse, before our species
crawls off to join the dinosaurs.
Birney, Earle. “I Accuse Us.” Happiness Holding Tank: A Magazine of Poetry & Other Information 3–4 (1972): n. pag.
Reprinted with the permission of Wailan Low, executor of the estate of Earle Birney.