I cannot influence the fate of the globe.

Do I start wars? How can I know

whether I’m for or against?

No, I don’t sin.

I only turn screws, weld together

parts of destruction,

never grasping the whole,

or the human lot.

I could do otherwise (would parts be left out?)

contributing then to sancitifed toil

which no one would blot out in action

or belie in speech.

Though what I create is not good,

the world’s evil is not of my making.

But is that enough?

(From Classic Catholic Poetry, complied and edited by Thomas P. McDonnell, Our Sunday Visitor, 1988, p. 135)