Pity The Nation by Kahlil Gibran

My friends and my road-fellows, pity the nation

that is full of beliefs and empty of religion.

“Pity the nation that wears a cloth it does not weave…

eats bread it does not harvest…

and drinks a wine that flows not from its own winepress.

 

“Pity the nation that acclaims the bully as a hero,

and that deems the glittering conqueror bountiful.

 

“Pity the nation that raises not its voice save when it

walks in a funeral, boasts not except among its ruins,

and will rebel not save when its neck is laid between

the sword and the block.

 

“Pity the nation whose statesman is a fox, whose

philosopher is a juggler, and whose art is the art of

patching and mimicking.

 

“Pity the nation that welcomes its new ruler with

trumpetings, and farewells him with hooting, only to

welcome another with trumpeting again.

 

“Pity the nation divided into fragments, each fragment

deeming itself a nation.”

 

by Kahlil Gibran

(1883-1931), Lebanon

O Make Me A Mask by Dylan Thomas

O make me a mask and a wall to shut from your spies

Of the sharp, enamelled eyes and the spectacled claws

Rape and rebellion in the nurseries of the face,

Gag of a dumbstruck tree to block from bare enemies

The bayonet tongue in this undefended prayerpiece,

The present mouth, and the sweetly blown trumpet of lies,

Shaped in old armour and oak the counternance of a dunce

To shield the glistening brain and blunt the examiners,

And a tear-stained widower grief drooped from the lashes

To veil belladonna and let the dry eyes perceive

Others betray the lamenting lies of their losses

By the curve of the nude mouth or the laugh up the sleeve.

 

by Dylan Thomas

(Notebook version March 1933; rephrased and severely shortened November 1937)

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He seeks to defend his inner privacy against the sharp examination of strangers and critics.