Ashes Of World War

Ashes Of World War
© Surazeus
2023 12 10

The empty silence of the windless plain 
that whistles in bleak hollow of my mind 
translates voices of my ancestral dead 
in strange stories that flash across my eye, 
so I can see our whole world in my dream 
that fades out when I wake without my name. 

The thriving city I see in my dreams, 
tall houses of brick with windows that gleam 
over gardens of people tending plants 
along tree-shaded avenues with lamps 
where families stroll to restaurants and parks, 
has vanished in the smoke of blasting bombs. 

The men in slick suits, the women in gowns, 
the children running in games of wild joy, 
the workers building things in crafting shops, 
the farmers selling produce in wood stalls, 
the businessmen contracting deals in banks, 
are now all ghosts with terror-haunted eyes. 

This paradise we built one thousand years, 
erecting churches, factories, and shops, 
while raising families in garden homes, 
has vanished from the world of changing forms 
when planes dropped bombs to blow it all away, 
and leaves me wandering in vast maze of Hell. 

Mad tyrant in gold castle on the hill, 
blinded with greed to control the whole world, 
built weapons of death with bullets and bombs, 
then organized millions of angry boys 
in fierce army driven by sense of pride 
to conquer fertile lands with stomping boots. 

Yet kings who reign over empires of ruins, 
and rule over corpses rotting in mud, 
will wander lost in Hell their hands design, 
proudly strutting in waste land of their fear, 
haunted by mute ghosts of people they killed, 
till they too shriek in despair at their death. 

I kneel on windless plain and drink black milk 
that bubbles from wound in heart of the Earth 
till my body is suffused with blind grief 
at senseless death of people I admire, 
and wanton destruction of paradise, 
then I scream swarm of crows into the sky. 

Since kiss of Pygmalion sparks me to life 
with flame of passion Prometheus stole, 
I will rise strong from ashes of world war 
to build new Pandemonium in Hell 
where I can reign as president for life, 
alone on stage in theater of skulls.