Conference Season Poem by Edwin Hopper

The young will always win in the end.
Watch them at conference on TV.
Their rivals seem old, and round the bend.
'I'm standing with our leader. Look at me! '

They're getting all our youth to engage.
They're learning to fake sincerity.
When their rivals crumble into old rage,
the young take their place in posterity.

Seeming so serious and left wing,
till later, with the dyeing of their light,
they wonder at the point of anything,
and reluctantly move to the right.

Pragmatism is sad, bad and strange,
and ideals are doomed to fade away,
when knowing nothing will ever change,
they feel so cynical and betrayed.


'Just wait. The future belongs to the bold! '
But only when they've become slow and old.