Replica
At the frontier rises a mountain’s weight of rage, Inequality’s own wall; the fevered race, in age on age, Keeps no account of how the river’s current runs, In mirrored life, desire dreams of yet new kingdoms won. Thus living, language only forges a prepared facsimile; The old inhabitants revive at exiles’ battered entry. Those lost in thought, weighed by the native sons’ revolt, Build nations that are never mankind’s beating-heart result. Illusion’s bonds keep rhythm with sin’s decline, While gainless are the words; the selfish continent aligns Itself on wrong, injustice — raising daily power On heartless ground, where politics corrodes by hour. From disputes of land is born the force that takes The sword from its own name, from the self it breaks. On the road to the cremation-ground, it brings The grief of kinlessness — not patricide, but springs Of chaos that slay the child, and leave to heirs-to-come The sure sign of the alleyway whose end is dumb; ...