Walter! Thou shouldst be living at this hour—
Thy country needs thee. She is a mess
Of snits and umbrage, clamors for redress.
Thought is abandoned, reason overthrown,
The puppy-huggers make each slight their own
and fl aunt ersatz stigmata. We are selfish men
(and women and transgender, et cet’ra, close paren)
and there is no health in us. So how can we again
restore those manners, freedoms, virtues, power?
These puritan bacchantes howling down the tower
Think they’re the first ones, cannot see how small
The objects of their passions. A Pentheus of pages,
A holocaust of thought, a combat of them all
Against themselves. O, what can be the harvest when they fall?
Envoi
Remind us how to call a spade a spade,
To wear our boots in barnyards, but to dig
And not disdain beginnings truly made
But notice and direct the true-grown twig
