A COUNTRY RIGHT & WRONG
Following 9/11 the world's sympathy lay four square with the United States. Even the left/liberal axis, so long entrenched in opposition to American imperialism masquerading as the militant defence of the little guy, melted as the horrors were revealed. Islam red in tooth & claw became the new shibboleth & suddenly the Moslem in the street carried the sins of the fanatical few on his back.
Now once again America is seen by marching millions all over the world as a force of darkness. A mighty country comprising a multitude of races & nationalities, each identifiable by its particular & widely various cultural characteristics, stands, increasingly isolated, about to embark upon an insane adventure. A small group of men & women in Washington has made certain decisions that will bind that polyglot population through the nation state to a course of action that in no way represents the everyday hopes, aspirations, priorities, needs of that vast collection of men & women spread out across the continent.
For decades I have entertained an ambivalent perception of the United States. From an obsession as a suburban middle class English child with Western frontier history I moved on to complete absorption as an adolescent with jazz, blues, American folk music & the poetry & prose of the beats. Both passions endure into middle age, surviving repugnance for the sometimes brutalist politics & policies of successive administrations, for the hysterical religious fundamentalism that prevails, for the relentless materialism that cheapens & coarsens so much of the fabric of American life.
But the vitality of its art springs from an openness, a readiness to engage with life, an appetite for interaction & communication, a freshness, that doesn't seem to characterize European social & cultural functioning. Certainly in Britain now there is a pervasive cynicism that goes way beyond its much vaunted cherishing of irony & detachment. And - the recent anti-war gatherings in London & Glasgow notwithstanding - this has led to a sort of quietism, a sardonic acceptance of political chicanery as being endemic to the process & therefore beyond reform.
A few years ago I crossed the Canadian border from British Columbia. It was my first visit to America & we were heading down through Washington & onto the Oregon coastline. Just across the border, while the others plundered the factory outlets, I sat in the car & looked around at a landscape at once alien & familiar, pondering my ambivalence. As 18-wheeler semis barreled down the highway & corn-fed families clambered out of pickup trucks I sketched out a sort of love poem, which eventually emerged thus…
DRIVING TO AMERICA
From that first bright prairie morning
at the frontier of my days
I have been
driving to America
From the flock and horsehair saddle
of a London cinema seat -
Jimmy Stewart shrugging on
a sheepskin coat in
Where The River Bends -
I have been driving to America.
Through the canyons
and the arroyos.
and the sagebrush trails
of my back garden,
lost in the folds of
of a bright red cowboy shirt
(all the way from Montreal)
and squinting from beneath the brim
of Grandpa's panama,
I have been
driving to America.
Through the longing
for that too bright silver
Lone Star pistol, hinged like for real
before the trigger-guard, with a cylinder
that actually revolved
and a hammer you could cock,
in a holster like the rawhide one
that the kid next door but one wore
hanging low, I have been
driving to America.
Through the pages
of the yellow paperbacks
that ranged along my windowsill
("Triggernometry: a Gallery of Gunfighters",
"Desperate Men: the James Gang
and Butch Cassidy"), through their
dusty streets and through
the batwing doors
of their saloons
and in the cool dark
of their livery stables,
the bright noon heat of their
desert days, and in the cordite stench
of their gun battles (the OK Corral,
the Lincoln County Cattle Wars,
Jack McCall shooting Hickock in the back
In Deadwood, South Dakota), I have been
driving to America.
Then through the skidpan hiss
of blue and purple-labelled 78s
(London American and Capitol),
the jump-jive scamper of Gene Vincent's
Bluecaps or the thick fat gumbo
beat of New Orleans - "I'm Walkin'",
"Blueberry Hill", or the Macon, Georgia scream
of Little Richard, or the hound dog
longing of "One Night (With You)" -
Presley's eyes sleepy with lust,
the lip flickering into a sneer…
Then later through the rattling snares
and sneezing cymbals in the blare
of Ory's blue trombone, white-heat
of Armstrong's cornet;
and the crosstown traffic clamour
of Gillespie, Parker, Monk;
the high water, muddy river surge
of Mingus, Jimmy Knepper, Roland Kirk;
and the basement pulse of Howling Wolf
and Little Walter, Muddy Waters, Sonny Boy,
under the Mississippi/Illinois stars; B.B., Albert,
Freddie King, rocking with eyes tight shut
in front of a herd of nodding saxes;
through the tumbleweed, alfalfa,
cottonfield and city cellar chaos
of its music, I have been
driving to America.
On the flatbed back
of a farmboy's truck, heading south
from Iowa to Denver, Colorado,
Montana Slim, Sal Paradise
beside me on the dream-road
to Anywhere, USA;
through mirror shades, the smoke
from a chewed cigar, blue diesel
haze, the silver powder of a starry night
or the yellow flare
of what might be a prairie moon, I have been
driving to America…
And now, anonymous, unshadowed,
hidden in the lee
of a southbound truck,
I wait at the border.
Five black Canada geese
pull themselves across the sky,
quitting the mudbanks
of the Fraser River
for the deep-rift gorges of
the long Columbia. A high sun
straddles the 49th and through
its dancing tarmac mist we roll
like conquerors who have crossed
immeasurable distances and now awaken
in clear light on the real highway,
driving to America.
11:12:59 PM 
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