The World Had Turned Unnatural...A Poem

The world had turned unnatural, corrupt, depraved;

sickly sentimental what once was honest, free

and brave. Loss of courage, faith, belief, creating

trepidation; acts of seeming honor, love, but

self-disgust, fear of life disguised, hidden even

from ourselves. Our causes held with fiercest passion,

hate of all who disagree, dare oppose, in case

our rage, the horror of our empty lives, may be

revealed to us, make life itself untenable.

The worn-out culture of the day; tired, dead painters,

poets. Litanies of mindless names, decay;

trivial pursuits, hubris-driven, meaningless;

vocations, misspent, shallow; fallow minds askew.

Mankind's insistent needs, terrible, aspiring,

unmet by selfish narrowness, fools' arrogance,

denying, corrupting the hard tasks of living,

dying, our cries to man and god for truth, meaning,

purpose; only long-dead formulas, dead cliches.

How dare such creatures proffer tiresome trash,

paid off by moneyed wretches like themselves,

while humanity hungers, longing for

renaissance...ideas, life, reborn anew;

significance recover, decline eschew.

Copyright by Don Gray