Flags are bits of colored cloth that
States use to Shrink-Wrap our Minds²
White Flag Choking on the National anthem³
Banners Flout the Sky and fan our people Cold⁴
Flags of all Nations – be duly Lower’d at sunset!⁵
What is the sense of giving a Boundary to All This,
Of giving it a Name and ceasing to love where the
Name Ceases to apply? If Love of one’s Country
Is Hate of one’s Uncountry, then it’s a bad thing⁶
I have No Country to fight for – my country
Is the Earth – I am a Citizen of the World⁷
We Rent the Banner with seam and gash⁸
We’re Fed Up with National Colors –
The Pigment of Life is what we want⁹
Blown Banners change to Wings¹⁰
¹ E.E. Cummings, I Sing of Olaf Glad and Big
² Arundhati Roy, Come September
³ Efe Paul Azino, The Defiance of Flowers
⁴ William Shakespeare, Macbeth
⁵ Walt Whitman, Crossing Brooklyn Ferry
⁶ Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness
⁷ Eugene Debs, In Whose War Shall I Fight?
⁸ John Greenleaf Whittier, Barbara Frietchie
⁹ Tadeusz Borowski tr. Rafferty, Natchez, & Pioro, Project: Flag
¹⁰ Wallace Stevens, To an Old Philosopher in Rome