Perhaps you’ll find a home in some back yard
Beneath a poplar, or beside an ash;
How could those soft suburban hearts grow hard
And leave you stranded in the morning trash?
Perhaps someone will pick you up and see
Those qualities your owners didn’t notice:
Your hunchbacked stoop, your gnarled and knobby knee;
Your bloblike squat, as dumpy as a poultice.
But then again, perhaps it’s for the best—
In Scarsdale, shifts in decor’s apparatus
Are unrelenting, like the primal quest
For Lebensraum, and cash, and social status.
Much better that you take your speckled hump
And grace some corner of the local dump.
—Joseph S. Salemi
We launched the First Things 2023 Year-End Campaign to keep articles like the one you just read free of charge to everyone.
Measured in dollars and cents, this doesn't make sense. But consider who is able to read First Things: pastors and priests, college students and professors, young professionals and families. Last year, we had more than three million unique readers on firstthings.com.
Informing and inspiring these people is why First Things doesn't only think in terms of dollars and cents. And it's why we urgently need your year-end support.
Will you give today?
