I, Too, Sing This Country Poem by Birgit Bunzel Linder

I, Too, Sing This Country

It wakes me every hour—
On a strict schedule
That moves to a regular rhythm,
Ca-dence, ca-dence, ca-dence.
It rumbles on until I fall asleep again,
And I dream of meters,
Of dissonances and sudden
Enjambments, and I am
Attacked by iambic feet,
Strangled by trochaic lines,
And sentenced to rattle on and on
In this long-distance train of thought,
And Whitman is the captain....
I toss and turn from grass to stars
And back to myself.
I cannot sleep for all I hear is
Germany singing...
America singing…
China singing…
Finally, when the sun almost rises
And a nation finds its caesura,
I nod off and I dream
Of raisins, Niemandsrosen, and wild geese
Until the train is once more deferred:
A darkish man pulls the stops and shouts,
“Listen up folks! I, too, sing this place! ”
And he sings a weary blues
That assumes what I assume
And then he moves the train
Into cadences again.