Ode to the 20th Century
I know your age of freedom could not last
as we were stalked by electric ghosts,
these heralds of the efficient that
divide us from even our thoughts.
With the Axis reptile under the heel
and the red sickle hammered into rust
we had damned the lie of the total to fall
to the iron bin, the collection, the list
of those slave powers sentenced to begin
their life terms on the library's bookshelves.
Or so we thought, as our beguiled selves
embarked their ideas on an empty run.
Chambers of chatter with misused words
and words taken flight in a verbal dust bowl
made our books a series of gravestones
to mark the time our culture held soil.
Tolerance was as gentle as the mother
who sardined in was the willing prisoner
of a large family, a menagerie
of different stripes that could simply be
a nation without these mendacious lords
who every lying send thought to exile.
Now the devout know that before the fall
that this was a nation pregnant with words.
Watching the fruitful stars we would quiet and still
stand at night to witness virtue's ordeal.