[Chronicles] If I were committed to wiping the United States from the face of the earth—and I am not—I might begin with defacing statues and memorials with graffiti.My graffiti would be more literate than most. I imagine the Statue of Liberty’s base with the plaque bearing Emma Lazarus’ poem that begs the ancient world to send to us the "refuse of your teeming shore," men "yearning to breathe free." "I lift my lamp beside the golden door," says Lady Liberty. And I would augment the sonnet with these lines:
Such was the spirit of men who knew no fear,I might likewise make many another sign more striking and accurate with the addition of Dantesque verse: "I am the way into the city of woe," would greet you upon entering the Kennedy Expressway on Chicago’s outskirts. "Welcome to the University of California, ’where men have lost the good of intellect,’" would be another. "Come see the masterpieces at the Guggenheim, for there you may see works ’plunged deep in just the sort of dung / you dump from human privies and latrines.’" At the Guggenheim, that description is sometimes not just figurative.
But they are gone; their land knows them no more.
Abandon all hope, you who enter here.