All Rise

30 May 2025

https://poems.culturing.net/2025/05/all-rise/

It is time to face your adversary,
but does he have a face? Or is he
idea only, or, less, an abstraction
imbued by one's training for combat?
It's time nonetheless, notwithstanding these questions,
for there are the drumbeats of war,
and you, poor you, are heard chanting
destruction upon those you do not know.
Is it time, or are drums known to lie?
We must fight one another, they say,
in good Latin, but I have begun to doubt
their designs. Can you question it?
Can you too sniff out these rats of the mind
and in place of them take hold of visions
in which all rise? It is time
to expunge adversarial lies from our laws,
from our thoughts, from the skies.
We have only begun to understand what could be
when our whole is greater than its parts,
when we all comprise something noble,
when no one is master or slave.