[Uche Ogbuji]

Originally Posted by Michael Cantor

Inflictus would be fine! If you read Invictus or If, I swear I will track you down and make you apologize to all those fine young people if it takes the rest of my life.

Ditto. Julie, I think you'd find yourself beset by Erinnyes-Spherians if you "go there." For chrissake they'll already be having to deal with the musical Invictus of "Land of Hope and Glory" AKA "Pomp and Circumstance."

You could of course make them laugh by doing the Polonius monologue from Hamlet.

But for a more serious suggestion, considering the world economy how about Auden's "Leap Before you Look" or Snodgrass's "The Campus on the Hill?"

OK OK! So that was only half serious. Blimey, it's a surprisingly tough assignment. I think Stevens's "The Idea of Order at Key West" is an excellent poem for putting a young person in proper mind of the world, but I suspect it might be a bit of a stretch for what you're looking for.

There's of course plenty from Elizabethan and Jacobean poetry, some I can think of from Persian and some from Victorian poetry. But I'm thinking now that the world does need a good, modern poem for such an occasion. Maybe with inspiration from all the various ideas that have emerged in this thread, you can work on supplying just such a masterpiece.