Yes, Yeats summed it up
and we didn’t listen.
We seem never to listen.

You know: no convictions, the good
up against the passionate intensity
of the ignorant, etc.

How each hourly travesty is
quickly eclipsed by the next
so memory doesn’t function

as we need it to. Where to begin
to reckon the awful toll greed
and heartlessness

have already accrued? Nothing
sticks. The thefts from the masses
to give to the few, the infants

in cages, the medical equipment
hoarded in a time of plague?
Time to screw our courage and

our memories to a sticking-place.
The murders. The mud slung so far
just runs down our walls.

Pay attention to one day.
Call out the outrageous
with true outrage. No

traction, no action, no
satisfaction. About face.