The Thorned Road

Within the swollen heart of civic pride,
Rise brazen towers whose roots are sunk in clay
Compacted from the nameless dead; beneath,
They breathe no more, yet hold the weight entire,
While Peace, in garments pale, attends the throne,
Her tongue a mask, her hand in tyrant’s grasp.
 
Here murder walks in state; the brother’s hearth
Is torn by petty feuds; the desert wind
Brings vultures swarming over funeral biers;
The mast is splintered, yet the mariner
Binds rope to rope and braves the storm again.
The stream runs red, the womb of life defiled;
The flood of wrath and whispered treachery
Bears on its tide the rusted swords of trust.
 
Man unto man becomes the sharpened blade,
Our hands made weapons by our own design;
The city cries of them and us, till all
Are drawn within the same devouring snare.
The boneyard rises where the temple stood,
Its ashes cast at Sorrow’s naked feet;
Yet pride still climbs the stair, and in his palm
Clasps what he deems the sceptre of his right.
 
The citizen, by nature’s law made frail,
Turns iron-hard in stone-built companies;
The blind king smiles when bonds are tighter drawn,
And calls it peace, though liberty lies slain.
This path to the Great Release is steep,
And hard it is to bear self-honour still,
When all the sap of heart is drained away.
 
Through alleys choked with thieves of breath and bread,
Through thorns that tear the very will to live,
I keep one firm resolve: to walk unbowed,
Though every step is bought with blood’s slow ebb,
And every mile is paid in soul’s decay.