They called the generation Great, who bore
as children the Depression, and then fought
a few years later in the awful war
(that birthed the bomb) in which the world was caught.
But speaking as a child of that lot,
before the last of them has passed away,
I’ll mention errors everyone forgot
amid PR and movie fiction’s sway.

The cohort all agreed that they had earned
the right to self-indulgence, so they made
the suburbs, pill-abuse, and they unlearned
all debts to earth while chasing global trade.
Attending to resentment for lost youth
they focused on themselves, and tarred the truth.