EDGAR: Who is't can say 'I am at the worst?'
I am worse than e'er I was.

Shakespeare (King Lear)

And yes these words will not for long hold sway
As Edgar lives to see their contradiction:
His father blinded, brought to 'smell his way
To Dover.' Nor has any interdiction
Uprooted man's inhumanity to man.
And though some glory in our control
Of nature's world, such braggadocio can
Not hide the damage now and still to fall.
Regardless of afflictions brought about
By ethnic and by clannish prejudice,
A mental torment hard as any clout
Can shove a body to the precipice,
As when I heard a woman, physically fit,
Repeatedly aver that life for her is shit.