What should you expect, really,
When the father is himself
Aloof and irresponsible?

Why should you not expect to see it also
In the kids, who won’t care
To improve themselves much, or to learn?

They are starved of that example
That can make a soul hungry for such things,
And left―at best―to discover such for themselves,
Against the philosophy of the very man
Whose seed they are.

Rare is the soul who will dare at length
To care when his father does not―
Who does not surrender itself
To the longstanding reign of self-idolatry
Played out before it unceasingly in its early years.

We mourn the sad state of the kids
And strive to fix them this way or that,
But who strives to fix the father,
Destroyer of souls that he is?