What Promises They Make and Cannot Keep

Music: Duettino for Two Bassoons.
By Eugene Bozza.
Performed by Grossman, Ewell, Grainger at the Free Music Archive
under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license.

What promises they make and cannot keep!
Each year like well-trained dogs they bark and yelp,
An annual charade they cannot help,
Knowing well where they must drive their sheep.
Their vetted visions sow what none might reap;
Their practiced platitudes are off the shelf;
Their chief constituent remains the self;
Still, we vote and then go back to sleep.
We do not care how much they lie and steal
So long as streets are clean and taxes low,
And we are taken care of, more or less.
OK, the self-served suffering may be real
Of those poor souls we do not care to know.
But what has that to do with happiness?

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