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;
 
Where walking forward, none will lift their eyes to see
The certain pit; the landlords spread their traps with glee.
The dark sky’s solemn clouds still crave a vast dry lake;
And lifelong lessons, stubborn chants, the creed they make—
The jihadi words, the replicas, the fear, they stake.