Ode to a Dissident

Whence come our edicts when emperor’s die
And the cries of the poor awaken the West?
What fledgling sparrow they’ll forbid to fly,
What garlanded sins they’ll forbid to undress?
A brow-beaten horse abandons his sleigh
In search for relief, a warm spot to lay,
Ventures on down the untrammeled path
Removed from the sting of the “noble man’s” wrath.

Trappings of war fill up the dirt road,
Cannons, bombs, and sharp bayonets.
Rust-colored bullets blow ’round in the cold,
Derived from old fighters who fell unconfessed.
In what they live on but anthems and dust
A corroded statue, a bronze-tinted bust?
The tears of the world couldn’t water their graves.
O seeds of the past don’t shrivel away!

Yet seeds dare not wither ‘neath sounds of their names,
For active protest does reanimate
the plough-driven soil that no law hath claim.
Owned not by the wealthy nor high magistrate.
Ah, bold dissident with tightly clenched hands,
Where art thou reverence for laws of the land?
Why must you question the splendorous throne
Depart from the mob, and go at it alone?

“Don‘t follow the blind,” the rebel replied.
A simple response with haunting repose.
His eyes brimmed of grief, his voice a mere sigh,
His narration bleak, a story of woes.
He claimed that sweet Justice was meanly abridged.
I asked him “What’s Justice?” and what the night bids.
The rebel was baffled by the question I asked.
“Justice moves all from the spheres, to the grass!”

War was unfurling outside as I slept.
I heard a man praying over the guns.
“Our Father,” lockstep! “Who art in,” lockstep!
A thousand people died, ne’ermind who won.
What hath we wrought to inherit this end,
This black tragedy that nature hath lend?
As Saturn devoured the innocent skin,
Our passions devour the peace deep within.

The horse-driver wakes, his countenance red,
Cursing the heavens with infinite rage.
The dissident horse strayed far from the shed,
All on his own in an enlightened age.
“Damn the dissenter!” He angrily barked.
As the emblazon’d sun began to depart,
And there the sleigh lay, an incomplete pair,
the glimmering stone of a rich man’s despair.

So whence come our edicts when emperor’s die
And the cries of the poor awaken the West?
What fledgling sparrow they’ll forbid to fly,
What garlanded sins they’ll forbid to undress?
A brow-beaten horse abandoned his sleigh,
In search for relief, a warm spot to lay.
Ventured on down the untrammeled path,
Removed from the sting of the “noble man’s” wrath.