A Profound Fault

" To congratulate oneself on one's warm commitment to the environment, or to peace, or to the oppressed, and think no more is a profound moral fault."

- Robert Conquest, historian of Soviet-era Russia

A PROFOUND FAULT

Like the gift of San Andreas
Come its time
The self-congratulations of the new pious
Joining the mime
Cracks with more than mere crazes on the vase
Of such Californicated souls
As this our human clay returns to its older base
Mere things of the rank mold
Which deserve the earth to open in its quake
As wrong urns do their unmake.

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