Writing Wrongs
I thought to pull down strongholds with my pen
And that my verses, like those silver reeds
Blown from the tongue of Tennyson,
should then
Prove written words are mightier than deeds.
But in this drossy age
where thought costs dear
And prophets false with forgeries abound
And speaking Truth to power is quelled by Fear,
Few oracles of honesty are found.
Shelley describes poets as legislators,
Though Auden in a dismal strain replies:
Poems make nothing happen.
Of these praters
And their priestly pronouncements, which applies?
Though few lend ink to my satiric jibes
And Love's labor is lost in vain disgust,
I'd yet expose that taker of base bribes,
The wolf who wears the White House
in mistrust.
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