After experience taught me that all the ordinary
Surroundings of social life are futile and vain;

    I’m going to show you something very
    Ugly: someday, it might save your life.

Seeing that none of the things I feared contain
In themselves anything either good or bad

    What if you get caught without a knife;
    Nothing—even a loop of piano wire;

Excepting only in the effect they had
Upon my mind, I resolved to inquire

    Take the first two fingers of this hand;
    Fork them out—kind of a “V for Victory”—

Whether there might be something whose discovery
Would grant me supreme, unending happiness.

    And jam them into the eyes of your enemy.
    You have to do this hard. Very hard. Then press

No virtue can be thought to have priority
Over this endeavor to preserve one’s being.

    Both fingers down around the cheekbone
    And setting your foot high into the chest

No man can desire to act rightly, to be blessed,
To live rightly, without simultaneously

    You must call up every strength you own
    And you can rip off the whole facial mask.

Wishing to be, to act, to live. He must ask
First, in other words, to actually exist.

        And you, whiner, who wastes your time
            Dawdling over the remorseless earth,
        What evil, what unspeakable crime
            Have you made your life worth?

W. D. Snodgrass, “After Experience Taught Me…”, in After Experience