The Stuff of Virtue

How easy to say the pious things;

to stand before the crowd

and let the platitudes fall

like white, waxen pearls among the listeners.

How easy to command respect

with verses from the sainted scholars

to whom virtue must have come simply,

as we repeat their wisdom as cliche.

But then,

behind the closet door,

with no audience to applaud,

those pious words echo hollow,

those scholars are stone busts again.

And all we have to cut the shame

is whatever virtue we retain.