Perhaps you’ll find a home in some back yard
Beneath a poplar, or beside an ash;
How could those soft suburban hearts grow hard
And leave you stranded in the morning trash?
Perhaps someone will pick you up and see
Those qualities your owners didn’t notice:
Your hunchbacked stoop, your gnarled and knobby knee;
Your bloblike squat, as dumpy as a poultice.
But then again, perhaps it’s for the best—
In Scarsdale, shifts in decor’s apparatus
Are unrelenting, like the primal quest
For Lebensraum, and cash, and social status.
Much better that you take your speckled hump
And grace some corner of the local dump.
—Joseph S. Salemi
You have a decision to make: double or nothing.
For this week only, a generous supporter has offered to fully match all new and increased donations to First Things up to $60,000.
In other words, your gift of $50 unlocks $100 for First Things, your gift of $100 unlocks $200, and so on, up to a total of $120,000. But if you don’t give, nothing.
So what will it be, dear reader: double, or nothing?
Make your year-end gift go twice as far for First Things by giving now.
