SEPTEMBER 2

I sit watching television news

In the warm comfort of my house

Alarmed and ashamed

Of the depravity of my species:

A fog of fear and anguish

Circulates around the world

Like the sarin gas he used that

Settled on a Syrian neighborhood

Choking and killing children and

Parents and old people and cats...

And Assad the Terrible lives still

Safe in the luxury of his cozy palace

Surrounded by countrymen serving him

In conscripted servitude, the tyrant sleeps

And eats and pisses the same

In September as he did in July

Seeming unafraid the end may come

Rudely when he least expects it

And his pants are down:

Does he know the world watches 

And waits for the news he is dead

And his stockpiles of gas transferred?

Auden said Thucydides knew

About Democracy just enough

To make a speech but not enough

To teach dictators how to avoid

Becoming addicted to the special taste 

Of megalomania fed by obsequiousness

And ignorance of petty advisors

Informed mainly by military generals

Who drink the same sacerdotal kool-aid 

Peddled on bomb pocked roads 

Of a once-upon-a-time peaceful place.