POEM i: IBID

Ibid.

Surely power must serve other purposes.
— UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Geneva, 27 February 2026

We serve.¹
We de·serve it. *The world has changed.*²
We pre·serve the seat, the term, the majority of one.³
We re·serve the right: *the first duty of any government.*⁴
We ob·serve a minute's silence, then go back to *making every pound … work harder.*⁵
We con·serve two and a half trillion: enough to end extreme poverty twenty-six times.⁶

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¹ whom: the donor, the base, the board, the mirror.
² 22.6 million more deaths by 2030. 5.4 million not yet five.
³ see note 2.
⁴ ⁵ ibid.
⁶

No life is small print. Serve only the self, and the others are served up.