Ego: The eye knows less than grafting hands
In factories, whose rhythm is no smug ostentation
But a squirming for release from the drudge’s bands.
Eyes: But trade with the Third World, that helps our economy
Renew the drudges’ destiny, makes a billion dun dolphins
Do the crawl for their supper in our Northern sea.¹
Ego: Shall we lower our standard of living to give others
A chance to catch up? The grafter loves his car,
His BMW or Astra, more than his brothers.
Eyes: But family life suffers, if ruled by the paymaster,
As relations are marred by cupboard love, discontent,
Selfishness, and forged per ardua ad Astra! ²
Ego: Well-dunged in the heartstrings-turned-pursestrings fold
Is Greater Love-Grass: crapping coppers on their loves
Are sheep that are counted and sheep that are polled.³
Eyes: People would graze more healthily if they could:
They can choke and explore around their disappointment,
Then revise their verdict of what tastes good.
Ego: My sun-beaming eyes, gold and copper
Must glint more than grass-blades even in you!
Do you fear the Midas Touch spreading to the shopper?
Eyes: True-blue eyes hold the key to unlock a dimension
Of life as rewarding as anything Midas learned
From the golden touch that forced his abstention.
¹ Symbols here of harmony, communication and trust, “dolphins” are Third World traders done (left with no capacity for recovery or independence) by being trapped in a cash-crop economy.
³ Eragrostis cilianensis is grazed and fertilized by sheep in China. Consumerism produces an excrement- rather than love-generating society (by popular demand expressed in ledgers and at the polls), a society of sheep.