Dignity

We live in a world that has become
Intolerable as the subject for passing reflections
What is our response to the inescapable reality?
Are we too like these miserable little cliques to turn
Because of theoretic inadequacy
From social occupation,
From the poetry of pugative action
And try to find form and significance
In pure feeling itself,
Transplanted and reimagined
Seeking the meaning of experience
In the phenomena of experience,
Pure sensation becoming an ultimate value
In the neurotic and mystical attempt
To give physicality an intellectual content
In the sensitizing of nerves already raw
Meaningless emotion roused automatically
Without satisfaction or education,
As in melodrama,
Man can find his own dignity only in action now.

by Donald McWhinnie This poem was found in one of Donald's books after his death in 1987, by his son Paul.
Exact date of the poem unknown but is estimated at 1957 or earlier)