While on the beach at Olympic National Park's Pacific Coast section, watching the ocean by the light of the moon, I thought of Matthew Arnold’s “Dover Beach.” The poem below, with its parallels, is my understanding of how some of the same ideas apply, from my point of view, to America today.
OLYMPIC FAITH
The Olympic tides
Ebb as faithless as Dover Beach
But with this difference:
America, simple-minded, unreflective
Stands not on this its shore
To ponder the retreating, melancholy roar
And meditate on its portent.
A nation self-proclaimed of actors and doers
Could well pause to reflect and cogitate
The destinies are not manifest, and that
Even if they were
The manifestation is out of its hands, and,
According to the faith that once surged high,
The manifestor is beyond its ken. (scrutiny?)
Ignorant armies walk this beach, too,
In the service of isms and ideologies long deceased
Though still propped and propulsed
Like the undead of myth and horror
As Ba’alim for the feeble-minded
Uncognizant and in self-denial
That their gods are indeed their mammon as well.
Clashes by darkling night are back in style,
Or still?
Did they ever go out?
No, the sea of ignorance, alas
Is normal to be at neap
Flooding beaches, minds, thoughts.
The rulers, the priests, the denying masses,
Are all Canutes of democratic, leveling, mass-madness deception.
The Olympic tide
Ebbs not to return.
The waves of America the simple have crested
And will peak no more.
— August 8, 2006
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