The doleful elders gathered around a fire
and talked of wreckages,
deaths, the prowling of the beasts
and recalled
the dark nights
when
prancing came the leper-skinned warriors.
The young ones listened with intent
of dancing spears and fetid prejudices,
of forests destroyed,
of murders and mayhem.
The air reeked of imperial exploits
as the tales of horror were told all night
Commerce and the Queen,
the young ones grasped
had fed the warriors’ zeal,
atrocities committed to drive old gods away.
At dawn
they summoned old gods by chanting prayers
and vowed to stitch the past and the present
with the future in the forms of anecdotes and oratures
with the hope that the saga of pain will never be lost.
