Feeding Children Is Work (poem)

If more bombs would have won
If bigger bombs would have won
If more defoliation would have won
LBJ would have ordered it
Nixon would have ordered it

The idea that gwai lo ethos
Restrained the violence
Is the wrong lens To understand then
To understand now

The danger of now
Is faith in the gwai lo ethos
Makes the gwai lo confident
No mistake is so big
It can't be fixed

Society is held together
By the hoi polloi believing
It works. They need to believe it works
Propaganda has limits
On some level things need to work

—Carl Nyberg