Cezanne, when he was old, shouted in the streets,

This world is wild with horrors and with hates."

"The world, the world," Rilke wrote in Munich long ago,

Has lost all those old men who would weep now,

Weep before the peoples, prophets having that power."

Innocent Einstein asked how so many could not care,

And so much wrong. MacNeice said, in Dublin later,

Being a poet too, and young, "The world is crazier

And more of it than we think." You by ballot praise

An old whoring dishonest drinking ruthless easy

Image of statesmanship, over and over again,

Lined up at the polls with bitter but not better men.