Praised be the poet who put his pen down,
The faithful philosopher who took a wife
and, choosing the better part of valor
fled from folly, forgetting youthful freedom
and other corrosive illusions.
Scorning party politics, yet he
between the lesser of two evils
descried the wit in leaders' rhetoric
and counted him, duly elected,
as if appointed by the gods
to join that list of great men
who sewed their stars amidst
the blood and high-peaked waves
woven in that flag he now salutes,
which once he carried, smirking
to the privy for purposes of hygiene,
along with the good word
of our Lord he now contemplates
faithfully in solemn hours not
wasted on contemporary literature,
save a certain Bavarian
novelist, writer of historical
fiction.
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