I've been alive for more than a quarter of that,
Observing closely who my people are.
I have to say: don’t sell my people short.
We are not always right, for awful things
Have been done in our name, beneath our flag,
But more than most we learn by our mistakes,
Experimentalists, empiricists,
We get it in our mind to just try something,
And sometimes it’s a masterful success,
But other times a grim catastrophe,
At which point you will see us shrug our shoulders
And then move on to try out something else.
And that alone, that willingness to shrug,
And just move on, has served the country well,
This quarter of a thousand years, this stretch
Of time since first we struggled to be free.
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