Leavings

By its own logic, greed

finally destroys itself,

as Lear’s wicked daughters

learned to their horror, as

we are learning to our own.

What greed builds is built

by destruction of the materials

and lives of which it is built.

Only mourners survive.

This is the “creative destruction”

of which learnèd economists

speak in praise. But what is made

by destruction comes down at last

to a stable floor, a bed

of straw, and for those with sight

light in darkness.

-Wendell Berry, Sabbath Poems 2008.