bring me your tired and impoverished whores
and bring your secret, unwanted children.
bring me our outcasts, bring those you abhor—
your disappointments, your unforgiven.
let them stand upon my shoulders and gaze
out over broken rooftops to the sea.
let them climb over my body and wave
to their never-met cousins, the born-free
children of liberty and rock and sand
and sun-swept shores. together we will speak
of beauty and love and all we can stand
of such things, till our bones grow old and creak
and cry before the setting sun: "descend!
embracing, we, in dying light resplend."
