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| "Blowing the Shofar" by Seymour Fogel (1944) |
It’s time to put away the whistles
And blow the shofar instead,
To rouse us from our complacency,
Our complicity in the coming catastrophe.
We inherited not just a land
But a globe filled with promise;
A fecund cornucopia capable
of meeting all our needs and more.
But more and more is what
But more and more is what
Was wanted by fewer and fewer.
Abundance of milk and honey inducing
Lactose intolerance and diabetes.
We fiddle while the world burns,
We fiddle while the world burns,
Yet the poor go cold, hungry, and thirsty
With water tainted by sewage or salt
As profits and sea-levels rise.
And some, driven from their homes
And some, driven from their homes
By the encroaching oceans and deserts
And the conflicts that they cause
Seek a land of promise in small boats.
We can no more turn back the tide
We can no more turn back the tide
Of human misery and aspiration
Than Canute could command the sea
Or we can avert the coming judgement.
Some may seek to distract us from
Some may seek to distract us from
The queues for bread at foodbanks,
By media circuses stirred up by
Tweeting millionaires breaking ranks.
Divide and conquer, the strategy
Of the imperial powers of old,
Beloved by those reluctant to
Welcome their colonial offspring.
Why have you not woke, you slumberers?
Rouse yourselves from self-satisfied lethargy.
Search your deeds, or lack of them,
And prepare for what is surely coming.
Search your deeds, or lack of them,
And prepare for what is surely coming.
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