(No Form Can Be Better Than) The Last Dictator’s Sonnet

The efforts to try to fix the young
In place never end, never succeed,
Almost never fail, wholly, neither.

Their parents, grandparents, school teachers,
Village elders, variously ranked
Clerical authorities, armies,

Personality-cult dictators
Mold youth’s presumed impressionable
Minds, which take some impressions, lose some.

Inevitably, some minds spill loose,
Thanks largely to conflicts of interest
Among their elders molding them,

While most grow up more or less as told
To believe their young must fit their mold.