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Let's Pretend

The Mad Gardener, drawn by Harry Furniss



He thought he saw a Garden-Door

That opened with a key:

He looked again, and found it was

A double Rule of Three:

“And all its mystery,” he said,

“Is clear as day to me!”

—Lewis Carroll, “The Mad Gardener’s Song” in Sylvie and Bruno (1889)

 


Let’s pretend we’re happy.

Let’s pretend we’re sane.

Let’s pretend depression’s

Just “skin in the game.”

 

Let’s pretend democracy

Is what we practice here;

Not genocide and apartheid

For those we need not fear.

 

A million elsewhere starving—

It’s after all their right.

Thousands blown to fragments—

But do it out of sight!

 

We multiply together,

We cross our hearts and die,

Just like all those others

Now gone without a sigh.

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