CHARITY, n. Evidence for the existence of disposable income, usually obtained under circumstances that created the need for the charity – as when the moneyed interests in Gulf Coast cities invest profits and tax dollars in sports megastadia, but not in the means to keep those stadia, or the people that resort to them, above water.

Ah, Charity! Afar your chanting sounds!
Boldly do you plead against the frowns
Of those who hear your composition
As nothing, aye, but one more imposition
Coursing through the speakers of electronic minarets,
Touting vacuum cleaners and cures for cigarettes;
The next voice in the chorus that makes its claims
On all who have a dollar to their names.

But how then does the timbre of your speech
Keep its robustness, while the masters of donation meet
At finest destinations, and in the best hotels
Ponder applications, never looking on the swell
Of folk whose lives are just diminished expectations -
Who offer hungry neighbors their protection
Though hungry themselves, not knowing when if ever
The situation will be changing for the better?

Can it be that you perceive, in these bereft,
The little hope of heaven we have left?

- Octavian B. Grosso

  - O Ceallaigh

Copyright © 2006 Felloffatruck Publications. All wrongs deplored.