Richard Y. Ball, 'O tempora, O mores!'
O tempora, O mores!
Splintered buildings, ruinous trees:
Arms stretched heavenward.
Curling smoke
Mirrors their prayer,
Reflecting the stench of death.
Blackened bodies,
Prostrate in homage to Mars.
Created in love by Love,
With families and friends,
Libran had been their living.
Then Jupiter’s son’s cavalcade came,
Calling them forth
To join him
In heroic acts.
It was cataclysmic.
Sheets became bandages, shrouds,
Furnaces ceased their roar, and
Fields grew like scrub.
Man glared at man
Through previously welcoming eyes,
Now blind to Love’s command.
Why can we not learn?
Thousands of years ago
Isaiah foresaw a remarkable re-forging:
Swords and spears into ploughshares and pruning hooks.
We know the score!
Yet Discordia’s shrieks still overcome
Concordia’s sweet song.
Littering the land,
The rotting corpses
Speak eloquently.
For them, no joy of human interaction,
Of shared experience and achievement,
But enforced carriage to the Styx,
Tongues tainted by a coin.
By Richard Y. Ball
Splintered buildings, ruinous trees:
Arms stretched heavenward.
Curling smoke
Mirrors their prayer,
Reflecting the stench of death.
Blackened bodies,
Prostrate in homage to Mars.
Created in love by Love,
With families and friends,
Libran had been their living.
Then Jupiter’s son’s cavalcade came,
Calling them forth
To join him
In heroic acts.
It was cataclysmic.
Sheets became bandages, shrouds,
Furnaces ceased their roar, and
Fields grew like scrub.
Man glared at man
Through previously welcoming eyes,
Now blind to Love’s command.
Why can we not learn?
Thousands of years ago
Isaiah foresaw a remarkable re-forging:
Swords and spears into ploughshares and pruning hooks.
We know the score!
Yet Discordia’s shrieks still overcome
Concordia’s sweet song.
Littering the land,
The rotting corpses
Speak eloquently.
For them, no joy of human interaction,
Of shared experience and achievement,
But enforced carriage to the Styx,
Tongues tainted by a coin.
By Richard Y. Ball