A Brief For The Defense Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: ABCDEEFGHIJKLFFJMHIN OPBQRSBTUV| Sorrow everywhere Slaughter everywhere If babies | A |
| are not starving someplace they are starving | B |
| somewhere else With flies in their nostrils | C |
| But we enjoy our lives because that's what God wants | D |
| Otherwise the mornings before summer dawn would not | E |
| be made so fine The Bengal tiger would not | E |
| be fashioned so miraculously well The poor women | F |
| at the fountain are laughing together between | G |
| the suffering they have known and the awfulness | H |
| in their future smiling and laughing while somebody | I |
| in the village is very sick There is laughter | J |
| every day in the terrible streets of Calcutta | K |
| and the women laugh in the cages of Bombay | L |
| If we deny our happiness resist our satisfaction | F |
| we lessen the importance of their deprivation | F |
| We must risk delight We can do without pleasure | J |
| but not delight Not enjoyment We must have | M |
| the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless | H |
| furnace of this world To make injustice the only | I |
| measure of our attention is to praise the Devil | N |
| If the locomotive of the Lord runs us down | O |
| we should give thanks that the end had magnitude | P |
| We must admit there will be music despite everything | B |
| We stand at the prow again of a small ship | Q |
| anchored late at night in the tiny port | R |
| looking over to the sleeping island the waterfront | S |
| is three shuttered caf s and one naked light burning | B |
| To hear the faint sound of oars in the silence as a rowboat | T |
| comes slowly out and then goes back is truly worth | U |
| all the years of sorrow that are to come | V |
Jack Gilbert
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