Classic Poem

In the spring I come to a resolution …
I will no longer sell my art, and since there are no magazines for it,
I will start a magazine of my own.

That then is the answer:
Rouse America, let the sleep be broken, let the national consciousness
Flame into American art, a spiritual fire
Victorious over the conflagration of the world,
The fired cities and fire-doomed hosts …

Let the Song of Walt Whitman rise in story and paint,
In music and the word.

Let the Seven Arts lead beyond the battle
Toward the unborn democracy of Earth
That gun-thunder die into song-thunder.

So I dream:
And Waldo dreams with me, a strange youth, all glory-wrapped in France
And still to be unwrapped and to become American.

We get the money:
We send out our call to all the artists and the creators:
Your time has come … you may take the stop out of your throats, as Whitman told you,
Let us come into community that we may be great.