The Declaration of Independence was, in many ways, a work of speculative fiction. It imagined a nation not yet seen, not yet known, and dared to inscribe ideals of freedom and equality onto parchment. With pen strokes as acts of defiance, its signers dreamed a world into being, one principled on self-evident truths, fragile but full of possibility.

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Yet, as Deborah D.E.E.P. Mouton reminds us, these promises have always been precarious. Her poem takes up the founding text, holds it accountable, interrogating where have these truths been realized, and where have they been betrayed? Her words are both renunciation and reimagining, lyrically tracing the distance between a nation’s aspirations and its stark realities.

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The work begins in contemplation. The original language of the Declaration is heard in its historic pen, gradually layered with music that underscores the magnitude of what was imagined. As Mouton’s text enters, the score shifts, its textures tightening, becoming more driving, mirroring her questions of loss, contradiction, and complicity. False promises give way to contradictions; lofty ideals collapse into the weight of misdeeds carried on the backs of others.

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The music and Mouton’s prose remain in dialogue, intensifying, until they converge in a climactic outcry reckoning with what America has done with its freedom. And then, suddenly, near silence. The work closes in a devastating quiet, leaving space for reflection on both the brilliance of what was promised and the consequences of what was chosen.

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Two hundred and fifty years later, the words remain, Look what we did with it.