The Poor

Plans for social ascension are announced now and then

By men in tailored suits,

Whisked away afterwards in limousines.

But the poor are not whisked away.

They remain, whistling through dark alleys, same as before.

Kind Hearts long to raise them to respectability.

Poor Kind Hearts!

What good’s respectability,

Naked, all by itself, without a foil?

Starving, racked with frenzy,

They can rise like a single beast, striking a blow unbelievably savage.

In bare sufficiency they build structures so elegant, so subtle,

They escape the attention of those who purport to study them.

Some fear them for their irreverence, sudden spikes of passion;

But these, to a lively mind, are the very reasons to love them.