A serpentine saviour

Won't be a saviour

At all, and irony

Irrigates this soil,

After all;

 

Yet there's a minor chord

Humbly persisting in truth,

A minor skew tending

Towards what we should do:

Some thinly-veiled idealism

That might guide

Our better angels still,

If only we can find

That spark of life

In the silt...