Reply To the 9,000 Poets Against War.

Who love the truth should now recall we were not raised, we did not fall, but slowly from the mud we crawl and have not yet learned much at all. Still as we learn and as we grow we do our best with what we know. The loving gardener prunes and weeds before he sows the fruitful seeds. The surgeon's knife, the prison cell to some small part must seem like hell. We kill the pests, we cull the herd to do aught else would be absurd. So as we strive to understand the price past failures' now demand we realise we are not free to hide within a fantasy. This world, both various and one, is real, and what is done is done, 'though we bemoan with tearful voice that fate has left us with this choice. Imperfect beings that we are we look toward the brightest star, embrace our share of pain and guilt to see a better future built, and with both minds and hearts awake accept the risks we have to take. When people in another land are suff'ring now at evil's hand I, with my love of peace, can not, quietly leave them there to rot, while rhetoric from clever minds praises the egos that it blinds, condemning those who drank not deep into a deathly druggard's sleep, to dream of men who tell no lies and that the world is otherwise.