Gods Are Always Little Shits

Viewed from a distance,
Viewed from below,
Great wealth does not improve character.
Great power does not improve character,
No matter how it was obtained.

But the furious churn of human behavior,
Of demographics and fairy numbers
Through innumerable banks and exchanges,
Cumbersome cooperative committees,
And all the billions seething, seething
To keep their lowest and weakest policed,
Generate more picayune persons, clots
Invested with great wealth and power
For their unimproved years as small flesh.

Unless you happen to know of a way
By which everyone can be ruled by no one,
And a way of getting everyone to agree
To be ruled that way, brace yourselves
For more cruel and greedy, unimproved
Characters, flecks turning over at the summit
Of human endeavors, tossed up by the waves,
Spit out by the churn of the waves to pretend
They command not just you but the waves.