The last line bundles up its predecessors into the poetics of the deep image. The italics only intensify the tone of lament. So when Rothenberg wants to look at the political instead of the natural, as he does, he does so elsewhere, choosing to do so in the abstract. They will punish the poor for being poor. They will punish the dead for having died.
Nothing can make the dark turn into light for the cruel majority.
Rothenberg quite plainly makes clear that mere democracy is not itself, that the majority's law is not always a just one, that majorities are not necessarily innocent, that more radical forms of democracy seem needed. Aesthetic truth rectifies social untruth. That this is an elegy only makes the poem more poignant, makes the grief of the persona part of the political indignation, complicates the emotional nexus of the voice. But this birthday poem is a dark elegy. For a persona to write a dark elegy on the occasion of a birthday, usually an occasion for festive and trite versifying, must be the apotheosis of an elegiac attitude.