Leadership

Oxymorons, like civil wars, pool to

Test every meaning of our better self,

And especially now make highbrows fools

Who figure Time a tyrant’s loyalest elf.

What propels the will to craft bad polity?

Mindfulness proves, for one, a barren brain —

And nature’s most rankled seed, enmity;

Woe the heart that many leaders stain.

Good leaders lift a leg to legacy,

Bad only to go down in history;

The paradox is shrewd: good is fallacy,

Bad is truth. The moral of our story:

To lead for self, be a politician;

True leadership, defer to statesmen.