Something Better Poem by Robert Kirkland Kernighan

Let us walk upon the grasses ;

See ! our knees are steeped in slime ;
Lo ! the golden autumn passes

And I 'm sick of guilt and crime ;
For the papers that we're reading

Throb and multiply and swell
With the villainies and horrors

That are done each day in hell.

We are vultures feeding gorging

On the carrion corpse of man,
And we feed our stunted children

On a mess of husks and bran ;
'Tis enough to rot a nation

Howsoever rich and broad ;
Let us take a short vacation

In the gardens of our God.

Make a schoolhouse of the prison ;

Let its fires all lighted be
With the worn and withered branches

Of the guilty gallows tree ;
Let us wash our brains and bodies

Sweep away the webs of sin ;
Welcome home a royal blessing,

Let the ONE who gives it in.

Let us turn the golden river
From its crystal bed above,

Where it overflows forever

From the shoreless sea of love ;
Let us dig a channel for it,

Dig it deep, and wide, and well,
Turn its living waters downward,

Flooding out the flames of hell.