A Journal for Western Man-- Issue VIII
G. Stolyarov II
On withered grass, by gleaming sunlight scorched,
A shattered monolith before me towers,
A crumbling remnant of abandoned hours,
An artifact by Southern blazes torched.
Ghastly complexions, hewn from moss-lined stone,
Blood-stained teeth bared, are hungrily awaiting,
With sacrificial victims’ hearts men baiting,
Seeking to rob them of their own.
Medieval dogma’s hurled from dried-brown altar.
A priest, a specter, chants a garbled verse,
On shackled populace inflicts a curse.
Their liberty alone can cause his strength to falter.
Into the meadow winds a mud-moist path
Where merchants, burdened, carry loads on backs,
The bulk of which extorted is as tax
And leaves them famished in the aftermath.
Naught matters for those millions of old
Except submission to the mighty Sun,
To the field-parching, fire-igniting one,
“Requiring” blood so that it not grow cold.
And muffled shrieks the generations carry.
The scent of rotting bone the air does permeate.
But on the way’s a force that shall them liberate,
From Europe send explorers’ hope-filled ferry.
A royal lion, towering atop the mast,
Does ornament the watery tides yonder,
And on it men of reason futures ponder
To dissipate the perils of the past.
In gleaming silver, gallant on their mounts,
Upon the tyrants they’re discharging ammunition,
Then building city, factory, and mission,
From which do stream progressive wisdom’s founts.
And bloody ruins of dread times gone by
Remain for me to grasp their terror,
The blind, surmising mystics’ error,
In giving flesh of heart to blank, gray sky.
