Classic Poem

That all these antinomies,
and others, resolve at the touch
of the term " Power " ( Power:
the capacity to preserve
or better one's lot, whether
by force or by art ...)

That both sexes, in all times
under all systems, pursue it —
a few without scruple, the rest
for protection against the few ...

That the rhetoric and passion
for freedom, justice, decency
propagate among the oppressed,
be the oppression real or imagined ...

That fifty presidential and one-
hundred congressional elections,
rhetoric aside, concerned Power ...

That here is the Historian's Stone. (Apply
ad lib. to the Public Record, or
to the heart's dark heterodoxies.)