Virtue has its own reward, but
Necessity views the world
on one side from a monocle
and on the other, through
a presbyopic lens. Laugh
if you wish: we all
do what we must, but if the exigencies
include howling Turks at the High Walls, then
we can, as well, dispense with a set
of robes attributed to the Madonna,
as with a coin, debased
by lack of gold, with an image
of yours truly on the reverse;
and reduced (ad absurdum)
to the size of a metaphor: a representation
of the final denouement, the Fall, after
a ridiculously long decline,
into the swill of everydaylife
that its denizens call modernity.