After Virtue

“It’s good to be faithful but it ain’t natural, as you knows.”

—John Berryman, Dream Songs, No. 142

Sufficient unto the day is the virtue thereof.

Say you have someone splendid to betray.

Niceness insufficient—you too feebly strive!

What's best is not the recommended way.

Things that struggle should yet harder strain.

There is the bit of business called “Alive":

One step forward, two steps back again.

What to do, then—still got half a brain?

Behind the bad we recognize, fate contrives

After virtue, vast, uncharted drives.

Despite our tribal socializing bent,

We act out a solipsistic temperament.

What to do, then, doing worth a damn?

“[E]ven god howled, ‘I am'” (quoting Berryman*).

*Dream Song No. 141.

Note: Aside from stealing its title, any allusion in this poem to Alasdair  MacIntyre’s book After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory (University of Notre Dame Press, 1981) is entirely coincidental—I have yet to read it.

Wednesday, May 28, 2025