Quarrels have long been in vogue among sages;
Still, though in many things wranglers and rancorous,
All the philosopher-scribes of all ages
Join, una voce, on one point to anchor us.

Quarrels have always made money—not friends…
The media needs them: their bread is their butter.
Fake news will approve, and it furthers their ends
As they drain every issue straight down to the gutter:
Quarrels have long been in vogue among sages.

Humanity’s sinful. You may disagree—
But the levites and wranglers concur with this fact.
Your genes still transmit what you choose not to see
And the emperor’s naked; it’s all a big act.
Still, though in many things wranglers and rancorous . . . 

History shows us that poetry’s useless;
Philosophers-kings will assume they can govern.
Bombs will explode their ideas as worthless;
You huddle in shadow. It’s Plato’s great cavern . . . 
All the philosopher-scribes of all ages.

Christ is the anchor: it’s madness or heaven;
Your soul is the boat and you head for disaster.
You move toward the reef… your craft will be riven—
Call NOW on the Lord, for the current drives faster:
Join, una voce, on one point to anchor us.

 PROMPT 3:

write a Spanish form called a glosa – literally a poem that glosses, or explains, or in some way responds to another poem. The idea is to take a quatrain from a poem that you like, and then write a four-stanza poem that explains or responds to each line of the quatrain, with each of the quatrain’s four lines in turn forming the last line of each stanza.

James Mangan: A Song from the Coptic