Lost on a fogbound spit of sand
In shoes that pinched me, close at hand
I heard the plash of Charon’s oar,
Who ferries no one to a happy shore.
“To be an ‘American poet’ is a choice, one that I personally made three decades ago when I pondered the alternatives between leaving a United States that was then engaging in an openly imperialist war in Indochina and staying, which meant resisting the draft and risking imprisonment.
“
Ron Silliman