Isolationism

Fear of immigration
and nativist policies
(ever at the expense of the native)
drive the world towards war again.
There is suffering,
there is suffering,
there is suffering;
and no one wants to help,
we all want to help ourselves.
The land cries out,
"What did I,
to make you forsake me so?"
But those who listen
are unheard.
Though the sky roars
with wind and storm,
the words of the heavens
fall on sealed ears
and stone hearts.
Though the earth was like
unto our mother,
nurturing our peoples
from our inception,
we have violated that tie;
we did not merely cut apron strings, the umbilical,
we bound and gagged her with them,
we are slowly strangling her to death.
And what of peace?
What of kindness?
And what of our humanity?
When did we decide to become animals again?
When did we forsake ourselves
and each other?
What fault do we find in
our better nature,
that we have strayed so far
from what is humane?
Mourn, O stars,
for the degradation
from sentient beings
to mere pleasure-seekers,
lotus-eaters;
man has become like unto a bacterium
traveling along a sugar gradient
automatically from birth to death,
towards the greater immediate reward.
How can you say
"We are not defiled;
we have not run after Baals"
when you wear hypocrisy like a crown,
and meanness lines your eyes?
Petty, foul creatures,
all the worlds can see through
your paltry pretenses at probity
to the tiny, dying, drying hearts
gasping with self-absorption;
for the waters of life long retreated
from such listless, stagnant estuaries.
How skilled you are at pursuing yourself
to the exclusion of all else!
And that exclusion,
that separation,
that cannibalism of the soul
will be our downfall,
my fellow abandoned, anguished, despairing beings -
our lack of couth, our philistinism,
our coarse vulgarity and provincialism,
our sectarian insularity and parochial
homespun bigotry, boorishness, baseness -
this will only lead to our downfall,
decadence, the rot from within
because we cut ourselves off
from all that nourishes
and beat each other to death
with the still-bloody bones of our ancestors.