Today is also Valentine’s, and so
For the schoolchildren little candy hearts
As we remember from our happy youth
Teenagers like them still, and so they should

Now lessons follow: the four elements
Of Anglo-Saxon poetry, history
Chemistry, a turn in the auto shop:
Yeats’ happy “ceremonies of innocence”

And in the afternoon, Mass, and ashes,
And the cleaners tidy up candy wrappers

                             Instead of corpses

“We can’t go arresting people for what they say in a private conversation…I’ve no doubt we shall come to that eventually, but at the present stage of our struggle for freedom, it just can’t be done.”

-Evelyn Waugh, *Put Out More Flags

Our leaders now investigate silences
And threaten imprisonment casually
For thoughts unknown and acts never considered
Under secret indictments alien to law

Star Chambers assemble in conclaves dark
Special prosecutors instruct their Cromwells
To find a law, or interpret one so
To make each midnight knock a work of art -

Mind what you don’t say, and how you don’t say it:
Our keepers now investigate silences

The first Lenten penance is being told:
Lent is not just about giving up things
Lent is not just about giving up things
Lent is not just about giving up things

Lent is not just about giving up things
Lent is not just about giving up things
Lent is not just about giving up things
Lent is not just about giving up things

Lent is not just about giving up things…
*But did anyone ever say it was?

The revolution is a stinking corpse
And spreading Walter Duranty all over a corpse
While chanting “It’s alive!” won’t make it so
Because a revolution is only death

Artists are never revolutionaries
Because artists work up the good and true
From the foundation of Creation
While revolutionaries obey diktats

Rearranging a corpse is never art
And revolution is always a corpse

For Thomas V. Morris and William J. Bennett
In gratitude for a wonderful summer at Notre Dame

O, thou dry Jansenist! A night of fire
Left in your pocket like a shopping list
Sitting quietly in a room, will never burn
To set your sere and withered soul alight

And one might wager that your calculator
In brass, for counting brass, touches not the heart
Which has its reasons which the mind knows too
Pensees which never make a night a day

Forgive thou, then, this *lettre provincial
And count it as a friend’s *memorial

So who was Stalin’s barber?  Did he joke
About mass starvation, and did he bet
Stalin five kopecks on footer matches?
“The Spartaks are sure looking good this season.”

“Ya think?  I’m betting on the Dynamos;
They’ve got a forward like you wouldn’t believe.”
“But, Comrade Boss, you had him shot last week.”
“Oh, yeah, after the Lvov game.  I forgot.”

“Sometimes you just **** me, Boss; you really do.”
“That reminds me - just leave your keys after work.”

You Russian poets must write your lines in blood
For often that is all that is left to you
By invaders, revolutionaries, and
“The briefcase politician in his jeep” 1

Perhaps every Russian is a Pushkin
In frost and heat, in every deprivation
Plowing in the face of the enemy
Building civilization with frozen hands

And always shaping noble tetrameters
Into an eternal song of a Russian spring

1 Yevtushenko, “Zima Junction”

“Above all, don't lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love.”

                 -Father Zossima in *The Brothers Karamazov

I am Napoleon now.  I want to be
Napoleon, and it is so.  I can be
Anything I want to be – isn’t that
The cleverness you’ve always taught to me?

My truth is the truth, and it must be yours
My self-determination - it obscures
Your bogus science and reality
Fiat and fashion my truth thus secures

I am a poached egg 1 now. That’s what I want –
It’s illegal to argue that - so don’t!

1 The allusion to an argument in C. S. Lewis’ Mere Christianity is well known.

Avant-garde post-modernism ego
Futurism symbolism acme
Ism constructivism cosmopol
Itanism formalism neo

Formalism futurism imag
Inism proletarian real
Ism absurdism maximalism

Socialist realism, nothingism -
Poetic beauty, in spite of the Isms

We can have our Pushkin, all thinky and sad
And our poker-playing pups, cheating at cards
Ruslan and Ludmylla dancing on ice
At the Houston Airport Holiday Inn

Did Pushkin paint the poker-playing pups
Or carve tetrameters while in his cups?
That green baize poker table, a samovar
And the Big Giant Head, who needs an ace

We can have our Pushkin, all thinky and sad
And too those kitschy dogs, being real bad!

The fresh death notices a reader eyed
“Who was this woman, who recently died?”
“My ex,” he replied, not breaking his stride
With bacon and eggs, and toast on the side

(In which good fellowship between Russians and Americans is probably not advanced)

Start the Evinrude – pull!
Grandpa’s Evinrude – pull!

Where is my sunblock? Where!
Over by the sodas – there!

Start the Evinrude – pull!
It won’t start, Dad – %^&!

Where is my +^% phone? Where!
There by your fishing hat - There!

Start the Evinrude – pull!
Grandpa’s Evinrude – pull!

Watch those tree stumps! Where?
&%#ing tree stumps! @#$!

Start the Evinrude – pull!
Grandpa’s Evinrude – pull!

Drift to that cove, now – there!
Cut the engine, now – shhhh!

Where are them fish, then - $#@%!
They ain’t here, Dad – *&^%!

Start the Evinrude – pull!
Grandpa’s Evinrude – &#%&!

*(Chorus fades as the sun sets over Tovarisch Bubba’s Bait, Beer, ‘n’ Borscht)

Upon reading Amon Towles’
A Gentleman in Moscow

Civilization requires a little effort
Ties must be knotted correctly, shoes must be polished
Cuffs must be linked, but not at all gaudily -
Elegant understatement at all times

On every occasion say, “Thank you” and “Please”
When addressing a lady one’s hat is off
And if tomorrow they are going to shoot you
Or beat you to death in a re-named street  

Do comb your hair, and try to stand up straight:
Civilization requires a little effort

Be not afeard. The isle is full of noises,
Sounds, and sweet airs that give delight and hurt not.

     The Tempest III.ii.129-130


Be not
Afraid
Iambs
Are just
The way
We speak
They are
Our natch
Ural
Rhythm

Or:

Be not afraid; iambs are just the way
We speak; they are our natural rhythm 1

Sometimes they must be squashed a bit, and then
(Hear “natural” as two syllables, a pair

Othertimes “natural” is read as three) –
Be a skilled artist in your poetry!



1 “Rhythm” is a trochee, not an iamb
   But let it stay, that poor, little lost lamb

You see them, sometimes, lurking in the shadows
Slipping away furtively, trying not to be seen
They’d rather clutch a volume of Dostoyevsky
Than try to act like good, plain, honest folks

They always thought they were something special
Always thinking about stuff, reading books
Not chanting the day’s slogans when they’re told
Not joining in, still thinking the old thoughts

We don’t need them. Our Leader will provide
You see us, sometimes, dying for ration books

When Lot’s wife shook with
Anger or fear, and looked back -
What there did she see?

Former People

For W. K. Kortas

We Former People have no reputation
So we are free to starve to death in peace
Or if we are unsightly in the street
Free rides to The Palace of Workers’ Justice

We might be beaten, we might be given a meal
Before we’re freed to a courtyard echoing
With the rattle of mop buckets and screams
And stood in liberating rows and shot

In glorious sacrifice to the Cause
Of progress and equality for all

No Exit 1

I fled it, down the minutes and down the hours 2
I fled it, from each InterGossip troll
I fled it, despairing, with weakening powers
But I could not escape the super bowl

1 No Exit, Jean Paul Sartre
2 “The Hound of Heaven,” Francis Thompson

A Letter from Ekaterinburg

Dormition of the Theotokos
1917

Dear Alexei,

We are enjoying a beautiful summer –
The days have been perfect ever since spring
Cooler mornings now, and that’s about it -
Nothing exciting ever happens here

How is the new government working out?
Some of the banknotes are overprinted
With vague slogans covering the Czar, but
Nothing exciting ever happens here

Petrograd must be exciting for you, but
Nothing exciting ever happens here.

Write soon,

-Mitya

“One of the Only”

Why do men write of “one of the only”
Since one is only, and only is one
A singular figure, alone and lonely
“One of the only?” Oh, let it be done
                 With.

Uncle Vanya and Lady Godiva

Uncle Vanya came strolling down the road
Wishing he had made something of his life
His young friend Anne loquaciously agreed
And with remarkable vehemence urged

him to endeavour to remediate his perceived inadequacies in the many precedent matters that burdened him…

Don Quixote suggested that worries were giants
Cassandra sighed, “There is only one page left”
Nick Adams whispered, “Shh! You’ll scare the  fish!”
Ambrose Silk asked the way to the world’s end

And young Lady Godiva, sans chemise
Outsourced her image on souvenir tees

V: Have you ever experienced deja-vu?
R: I remember someone asking me that.

I used to admire your poetry…I shouldn't admire it now. I should find it absurdly personal. Don't you agree? Feelings, insights, affections...it's suddenly trivial now. You don't agree; you're wrong. The personal life is dead in Russia. History has killed it.*

-Strelnikov in Doctor Zhivago (film)

Don’t write to be approved by masters who
Wear Rolexes in the Name of the People
Don’t write to be approved by masters at all
But be your own authority and see

Your life – yours - is nobler than manifestos
The latest noisy Guelphs and Ghibellines
All Power to the Constituent Assembly
One folk, one nation, one waffle with syrup

Write freedom through verses, and disobey
Anyone who pushes you what to say

Contents of that Secret F.B.I. Memo

Next week the world is going to end again
When the north pole and the south pole switch places
According to secret radio transmissions
Secretly beamed from the secret headquarters
Of the secret Club of Rome far beneath
The Vatican and secretly aligned
With the secret sword of the secret Knights
Templar with the secret star WD-40
By our secret Masters on the secret
Planet Xenophobe in secret accordance
With the ancient prophecy of Cranium
The Elder discovered in a Prince Albert can
By the Portuguese philosopher and
Explorer Almoso Nutellaeus
Who thus received the dark secrets of the
Atlantean sorcerers in a secret
Language which only he was able to translate
When the Moon God Myrtle of the Aqua Kirtle
Blessed his Radio Shack TRS-80
With a rare pixie dust which can only be
Found in a certain secret plain in the
Sahara Desert at the Winter Solstice
Marked by a Bionic Blood Altar cursed
By the Knights of Toledo in a strange
Ceremony which can only be witnessed
By the Initiates of the Order of
The Cumulonimble Secret Ferrets
Of the Discalced Colossus of Roads
Whose emblematic pilum can be discerned
By pouring lemon juice over the pictures
Of the Caesars in a sacred clearing
In the secret Wood of the Thirteen Oaks
And a Loblolly Pine made when The Primal
Pole-er Bear from Beyond Time set up
The North Pole and the South Pole, and gave the
North Pole Santa Claus and the South Pole Little America
Station, and this Manichaean duality
Has set the planet in opposition
To itself, resulting in the cancellation
Of Gilligan’s Island after only three seasons
Because Gilligan and The Skipper were close
To discovering the Pre-Raphaelite
Anaemic Amoebic Astrolabe in yet
Another papier mache cave infested
By toxic golden hamsters of existential doom
Guarding a time-and-space portal leading
Directly to Oak Island where Captain Kidd’s
Lost cuff links (the ones with little pictures
Of Elvis golfing with leprechauns) can
Be found, the cuff links that channel the energy
Between The North Pole and the South Pole enhanced
By the chakra of a Hoover vacuum cleaner
Once used by Winston Churchill’s housekeeper
During the Blitz before she married her second
Husband, Trevor, who was the Hereditary
Keeper of the Keys of the Guernsey Privy
And thus a carrier of fairy blood
As required by Ye Ancient Lawes of the Booke
Of…something-or-other…which was carved in runes
On Roman skulls just before the loss of
The Island of Anglesey to Governor
Suetonius who was told by The Voices
That the Druids invented rock ‘n’ roll and
Must be destroyed so that the harmonic
Harmony of the North Pole and the South Pole
Could be restored to their primordial
Nordic vanilla pudding.

A Soldier Smoking a Cigarette

A soldier lay beside a railway line
Smoking a cigarette, not thinking of much
Among some hundreds of other conscript lads
Upon a grassy glacis above the fields

The boxcars waited in the stilly heat
The soldiers waited like young summer wheat
Occasionally stirred about by winds unseen
And finally stirred about by orders unheard

They rippled aboard, and were taken away:
Beside a railway line a shadow lay

The Fifth Karamazov

When young we identify with Alyosha
His optimism and his innocence
His fragile, flowering Orthodox 1 faith
A happy, almost-holy fool for Christ

When older, the sensual Dimitri,
With irresponsible lusts and desires
Grasping for the rewards of the moment
Now, ever now, wanting everything now

Then older still, as intellectual Ivan
Sneeringly aloft, above all faith and flesh
A constructor of systems and ideas
From the back pages of French magazines

Though never do we identify with
Nest-fouling, leering, lurking Smerdyakov
Our secret fear, unspoken fear, death-fear:
That he might be who we untruly are

But hear, O hear, the holy bells of Optina 2
Those Russian messengers 3 singing to us
Inviting us to meet Alyosha again
At Father Zosima’s poor 4 hermitage


1 Russian Orthodox
2 The name of the real monastery upon which Dostoyevsky modeled his fictional one
3 The Brothers Karamazov was first published as a serial in The Russian Messenger
4 Poor only by secular standards

“Withdrawn from Salem Public Library”

Yevtushenko in a Used-Book Sale

“Salem Public Library, East Main Street,
Salem, VA 24153”
A happy book, thought-stained, and often-read:
An anthology of Russian poetry

Salem, Virginia must be a marvelous town
A library stocked with poetry, and stocked
With poetry readers who have turned again
And again to favorite pages here and there

Long-ago poets murdered by the Soviets
But finding love at last in Salem, Virginia



Re:

20th Century Russian Poetry: Silver and Gold
Selected and with an introduction by Yevgeny Yevtushenko
Albert C. Todd and Max Hayward, editors
New York: Doubleday. 1993

And Every Strand of Barbed Wire
is Excused

Perhaps the sound is pleasant to the ear
The concept that free men and women can choose
Wisely wise leaders wisely to lead them
Backwards, crashing the gates of Eden lost

And building there a world of perfect peace
No matter how many millions must die for it
And every strand of barbed wire is excused:
“Oh, well, at least we got rid of the Czar.”

The firing squads, the cries of dying children -
Perhaps those sounds are pleasant to the ear

Dear Somebody,

Being added to a collection is an honor; however, although I am not, not, not prissy, I do not want to be associated with a site whose title contains obscenities.  You are free to employ puerile language, and I am free not to do so.  Please delete my poem.

Did the Russians Hide Nukes in Your Sock Drawer?

The western sky is blue; the east is red
But try to put it right out of your head
If you find a Russian under your bed
Concealing a nuke that will **** you dead

The Intergossip surely must be right
So hit the keyboard now, and share the fright
On Social-Medium-Range all through the night
And type it really fast before…that LIGHT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Ding-****, the east is red, the west is blue
And rumours drift about, flake news, untrue

If the Russians Find Out
That the Iced Tea was Bugged…

If the Russians find out that the iced tea
Was bugged they may well conclude that Area 51
Has tested Tom Brady’s jersey which was stowed
In a bus station locker in Donetsk

With the claim check issued to Kellyanne Conway
And passed to a North Korean operative via
A secret drop in a hollow pumpkin
Behind a voting machine in Spokane

That was hacked by a rogue albino nun
Carrying secret numbers for Rand Paul

The Grammys Celebrate Workers

“A forklift carrying barricades held up a crowd of commuters…”

-Los Angeles Times

With frosted breath, hands gloved against the cold
A working man forklifts the barricades
Into the streets, that he may block himself
From musical celebrations of work

Inside the temporary Palace of Culture
Musicians are being told what to wear
What they are for, and what they are against
Their speeches scrolled on discreet telescreens

The workers barred from work shiver and wait
For artists great, who never pay the freight

The Death of a Good and Faithful Spider

In Tod Mixson’s ikon corner a good and faithful spider fulfilled its vocation in an arachnid-life well spent.

A good and faithful spider lived its life
In spinning and dusting and catching pests
In the ikon corner among the saints:
Kyril and Methodius, Seraphim

Tikhon the Wonderworker, Vladimir
Anna of Kashin, Nicholas the Czar
Zosima, Xenia of Saint Petersburg
And all the cloud of holy Slavic witness

Whose images were guarded worthily
By a little spider who served God well

Kursk

At a railway junction great powers meet
To blacken the earth with a generation
Of young musicians, mechanics, physicians
Electricians, farmers, painters, and poets

And a philosopher who loves to fish
Ground into blood and screams and scraps of flesh
By the future which some have seen, which works 1
For the dress-uniform closed loop of power

Beneath the Russian sky good young men die
And the tyrants who send them lie and deny




1 Lincoln Steffens

“Until the First Star” –
Orthodox Christmas Eve

The first star won’t be seen this night. The clouds
Obscure this fallen world, and seem to hide
The pilgrim paths to Bethlehem from all
Who seek their Saviour in the colding night

But yet the first star will be seen in truth,
In all the faces around the happy table
Gathered from field and forest, east and west,
Breaking the Advent fast with Christmas joy

And with the liturgies Our Lord is born
Beneath the star that will forever shine

All Change at Zima Junction

For Yevgeny Yevtushenko, 1932-2017

Everyone changes trains at Zima Junction
Changes lives; nineteen becomes twenty-one
With hardly a pause for twenty and then
Everyone asks you questions you can’t answer

And then they say you’ve changed, and ignore you
The small-town brief-case politician still
Enthroned as if she were a committee
And asks you what are you doing back here

And then you go away, on a different train:
Everyone changes trains at Zima Junction

“I went, and I am still going.”1


1Yevtuskenko: Selected Poems. Penguin,1962

“Gov’t Shutdown Risks an Undetected Asteroid Strike”

-news item

(I write this as a haiku since, apparently, we have little time left…)

Still, we conclude that
If an asteroid strikes us
We will detect it

“When I was in Graduate School…”

“When I was in graduate school when I
Was at Oxford when I was working on
My doctorate at the Sorbonne when I
Was on my fellowship when I was hiking

The Andes on my gap year learning from
The Colourful Natives when I received
The Something-Something Prize for Young Poets
From The Oppressed Grant Recipients’ Front…”

One notices that

Literary articles never begin with
“When I was busting my knuckles on the drilling rig…”

The Poets Have Been Remarkably Silent on the Subject of Firewood

(as Chesterton did not say)

“…’on back…’on back…’on back…WHOA! **** the motor.”
Leaning on the side of a pickup truck
Remembering the arcana of youth
On the farm: White Mule gloves, axe, splitting maul

Red oak, white oak, live oak, pine knot kindling
Three of us loading wood in the cloudy-cold
With practiced skill setting ranks of good oak
From the tailgate forward, settling the tires

Loading, unloading, stacking, and burning:
This winter’s firewood will warm us four times

We’re All Icons Now

Is there anything left that isn’t iconic?
Each sports hero, actress, and tummy-tonic

Now let The People say “iconic”

Each recipe and coffee colonic
And every writer said to be Byronic

And let the reviewer chant “iconic”

Famous lovers, ****** or platonic
Mountains and islands, and plates tectonic

And let The Newsies type “iconic”

Animals natural or bionic
All weather systems, calm or cyclonic

And let Mr. Meteor cry “iconic!”

Every magazine is stuffed with “iconic”
Which any Byzantine would find ironic

And let the Romans cry “three dimensions!”

Wait...dimensions…declensions…these don’t rhyme with iconic…

Oh, and don’t forget that for every reviewer every writer weaves that same old  layered tapestry of…something or other

And when you go home tonight just be sure to hug your children

When We Flew Among the Stars

When we were children we lay in the grass
And counted the stars, but only up to
A hundred or so, because we got lost
But not out there in space, right here in space

For space had fallen here, all around us
Oh, don’t you remember? We were among
The stars, flying wildly through the silences
Beyond all time, beyond all sense of self

We almost found the secrets of Creation -
And then our mothers told us to come inside

Neo-Post-Colonial Artificial Intelligence Deconstructed

All intelligence is artificial
We do not huddle in burrows, issuing forth
Only to chase down other living things
Beat them to death, drink their blood, and eat them

We moderns huddle in cubes above the ground
With indoor plumbing through pipes that sometimes freeze
While we are gazing, searching for lost truths
In glowing screens made in slave-labor camps

And we have stopped slaughtering other creatures -
We have machines to do that for us now

Little Plastic Army Men in Action on a Snow Day

If I were a boy

I’d range my toy soldiers before the fire
Vast armies of plastic in green and grey
With the cannon blasting the enemy -
A glorious victory again today!

If I were a boy

I’d eat my morning cereal with Robin Hood
Propped up in his Whitman book before me
Its pages open to an England where
Every day is summer, green upon the lea

If I were a boy

My mother would remind me, to my sorrow
That I have a ‘rithmetic test tomorrow

I. From a Vietnamese / Cambodian / Egyptian / Israeli / Lebanese /
Sudanese / Syrian / Afghan Child’s Garden of Verses

Flare light
Flare bright
First flare I see tonight
I wish I may
I wish I might
Not be blown to death tonight

II. From an American Man’s Twooter of Self-Pity

Subtle beep
Subtle beep
‘wakening me from my sleep -
Oh, no! I’m going to die!
Not meeeeeee! Don’t wanna fry!
It’s all about ME – boo-hoo!
Poor ME! Poor ME! I’m gonna SUE!

A Take Away from the Take Away Steak Fingers

King Henry II: Forks?

Thomas Becket: Yes, from Florence. New little invention. It's for pronging meat and carrying it to the mouth. It saves you dirtying your fingers.

King Henry II: But then you ***** the fork.

Thomas Becket: Yes, but it's washable.

King Henry II: So are your fingers. I don't see the point.

-Becket, 1964

Encapsulated in bivalves of foam
As bottom feeders in the fast-food chain
Small fragments of a poor dead cow, chopped, shaped
And formed into cow fingers that are not

For it behooves the diner thus to know
That cows haven’t any fingers at all
But the dear diner does, and digitally
Renders the cow fingers as nutrition

And that is all there is about cow fingers -
Not a topic on which the gourmet lingers

…Who Gives Joy to my Youth

Introibo ad altare Dei. Ad Deum qui laetificat juventutem meam.
I will go in to the altar of God: to God who giveth joy to my youth.

                                  -Daily Missal, 1962

                                  For Brother Simon

A child thinks joy is all about the child
And so it is. And maybe an old man feels
That joy just isn’t for him anymore
To kneel his creaking joints before the truth

But it is

A wise man knows that he is still a child
An infant playing before the cave of winds
A Moses borne upon the ancient Nile
A shivering youth stepping into the Jordan

Though the lad be strong and the man be frail
Both are joyful children at the altar rail

“Did Y’all Read About Those Chips in the Bible?”

In the Supermarket Checkout Line

“Did y’all read about those chips in the Bible?
Yessir, they got these chips now, and we ain’t
Gonna be able to buy or sell nothing
Without these here chips in our bodies

The C.I.A., some of those people got’em,
Yessir, and you ain’t going to the grocery store
And buyin’ nothin’ without ‘em. I read
Where it’s in th’ Bible, and, yessir, it is

Me, I’m standin’ on th’ World of th’ Lord
And I ain’t havin’ no chip put in, nossir”

“Go Inside Your Houses, Please.”

“Sorry, that page doesn’t exist!”1 You are
Well advised not to ask questions about
What happened here. Just move along;
There was never anything to see here.

“Go inside your houses, please. All these people
will be taken care of.”2 “You can search Twitter
using the search box below or return
to the home page.”1 Go inside your screens, please

All this awkwardness will be taken care of
Go inside your screens, please. Go inside. Please.

1 NBC
2 Doctor Zhivago, 1965

If Sneezes were Horses, then Beggars Would…Sneeze, Probably

O man – what art thou? Thou’rt not mighty
Clingingly pathetically to a Kleenex box
Instead of wielding a conqueror’s sword
Lifting patent medicines, not wine, to thy lips

Thy sneezing and wheezing will not win thee worlds
The book unread though open in thy lap
Thy darked-orbed eyes unseeing and unseen
Thy wretched, reddened nose – all is despair

And snot that runs in foul, polluted streams
O man – thou art little more than Nyquil-dreams!

A Meditation Upon Matters of Faith
And the Worthy and Diligent Study
of the Arcana of Mathematics
as Recommended to Industrious and Thoughtful
Young Men and Women

For Kyle,
Who is Enduring His First College Maths

Our Saviour never said “Now solve for X”
Such is not written in any sacred tex(t)

Saints Paul and Barnabas on journeys Psidian
Did not refer to topics Euclidian

The Corinthians were divided only by factions
Never were they divided by fractions

Good St. Paul wanted all to comprehend
The truth, and not some subtle subtrahend

But still…

But still (to me it is a great frustration)
Numbers are how we measure Creation

With them we plant the Garden that is earth
Building it up with word and work and worth

So that we feed and clothe and mend and tend
With crop rows plowed, panels welded, cattle penned

Airplanes launched, fires put out, and light bulbs lit
Messages sent – there is no end of it!

So brew yourself a cup of coffee
Find your Euclid and dust it off(y)

Work those angles on your protractor
Add, subtract, calculate, and factor

Apply yourself most assiduously
Soon you’ll be an engineer, you’ll see!

Admired by all, a man of great knowledge –
And it began in community college