Choices

They offer you many things,
     I a few.
Moonlight on the play of fountains at night
With water sparkling a drowsy monotone,
Bare-shouldered, smiling women and talk
And a cross-play of loves and adulteries
And a fear of death and a remembering of regrets:
All this they offer you.
I come with:
     salt and bread
     a terrible job of work
     and tireless war;
Come and have now:
     hunger.
     danger
     and hate.

Carl Sandburg

(False dichotomy of indolence vs. self-sacrifice?)

xxx