The rusting, decomposing hulk of the United States
  
  is moored across Columbus Boulevard from Ikea,

  rearing weirdly over the old municipal pier
  
  on the mostly derelict docks in Philadelphia.
  
  
  
  I’d forgotten how immense it is: I can’t imagine
  
  which of the hundreds of portholes looked in
  
  on the four-man cabin five flights down
  
  I shared that first time I ran away to France.
  
  
  
  We were told we were the fastest thing afloat,
  
  and we surely were; even from the tiny deck
  
  where passengers from tourist were allowed
  
  our wake boiled ever vaster out behind.
  
  
  
  That such a monster could be lifted by mere waves
  
  and in the storm that hit us halfway across
  
  tossed left and right until we vomited
  
  seemed a violation of some natural law.
  
  
  
  At Le Havre we were out of scale with everything;
  
  when a swarm of tiny tugs nudged like piglets
  
  at the teat the towering mass of us in place,

  all the continent of Europe looked small.
  
  
  
  Now, behind its ravelling chain-link fence,
  
  the ship's somnolent carcass, cables lashed
  
  like liliputian leashes to its prow, its pocking,
  
  once pure paint discoloring to blood.
  
  
  
  Upstream, the shells of long-abandoned factories
  
  crouch for miles beneath the interstate;
  
  the other way the bridge named after Whitman
  
  hums with traffic towards the suburbs past his grave;
  
  
  
  and "America's mighty flagship" waits here,
  
  to be auctioned, I suppose, stripped of anything
  
  it might still have of worth, and towed away
  
  and torched into pieces on a beach in Bangladesh.