Because the words, “Give us your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,”
Came to the base of Lady Liberty
Twenty years after the statue came o’er,
The party of no-nothing xenophobes
Believes the meaning thus invalidated,
Her torch and tablet highly overrated:
She is a harlot underneath her robes.
That immigrants should be hated and feared
The party vows, despite that she has stood
Above the harbor beckoning and good,
Enlightenment’s glow gleaming as ships neared.
No, I will not shun those who come, O Lord.
The light of liberty shines forth to all,
The tablet tells of laws writ large not small,
Justice the beacon men are aiming toward.
As relatively recently arrived,
White men have greatly been anticipated
By persons brown and black—whose work created
The culture whereby a nation has thrived.
“In God we trust” came later, after all;
The Bill of Rights, an afterthought, no trifle;
Although the motto was not etched by Eiffel,
The words in bold pan-humanism call.
“Give us your tired, your poor” so wrote the poet,
Her words in keeping with the statue’s aura—
Homogeneity begosh begorrah
The aim of xenophopes not scared to show it.
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