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)