BADRI RAINA | Caravan Daily
They flee from me who sometime did me seek,
Finding fault where none was before;
Every proclaimed success now seems to them
A canny cover-up for failure.
Once a man of substance to droves
Across a so aspiring spectrum,
My thunderings now annoy
Like the groans of a hollow drum.
Too late now for me to emulate
Examples of sincere, subdued men
Who speak little but deliver
Without gruesome discrimination.
I may of course still cause a blast
That sunders men into mine and thine,
Or beat the drums of righteous war,
Obliging the realm to fall in line.
But what is this my gut intimates —
That the empire may no more be ruled —
Curse the awakened hoi polloi
Who resent having been fooled.
(With Acknowledgements to Thomas Wyatt)
