Consider These, for We Have Condemned Them

Consider These , for we have condemned them ;
Leaders to no sure land , guides their bearings lost
Or in league with robbers have reversed the signposts ,

Disrespectful to ancestors , Irresponsible to heirs .
Born barren , a freak growth, root in rubble ,
Fruitlessly blossoming, whose foliage suffocates ,
Their sap is sluggish , they reject the sun .

The man with his tongue in his cheek, the woman
With her heart in the wrong place , unhandsome,unwholesome ;
Have exposed the new-born to worse than weather,
Exiled the honest and sacked the seer.
These drowned the farms to form a pleasure-lake,
In time of drought they drain the reservoir
Through private pipes for baths and sprinklers.

Getters not begetters ; gainers not beginners;
Whiners , no winners ; no triers, betrayers;
Who steer by no star, whose moon means nothing .

Daily denying , unable to dig :
At bay in villas from blood relations ,

Counters of spoons and content with cushions

They pray for peace , they hand down disaster .

They that take the bribe shall perish by the bribe ,
Dying of dry rot , ending in asylums ,

A curse to children , a charge on the state .
But still their fears and frenzies infect us ;
Drug nor isolation will cure this cancer :

It is now or never, the hour of the knife ,

The break with the past , the major operation .

C. DAY LEWIS

borne 1904

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