The Keep Poem by Dave SmithWhite

They were not a civilized race:
Our ancestors, who made this place.
Greed and avarice informed their ways;
In pursuit of lucre, they spent their days.
They walked like gods, but fell from grace.
And when, for a time, the earth became the sun,
And lit a distant Martian night
With little fires, and a new dull light;
When some by birth and some by right,
And some of lesser worth or might
Scuttled like voles to the huddling spot:
These very caverns, cut of rude basalt,
These holes, this pit, this yawning vault,
Carved with haste and crudely wrought
From corporate waste of cheap report,
Became a keep of last redoubt;
Wherein those in, keep others out.
And bargain with the sin of Faust,
Our haven from a holocaust!