Sonnet

They used to have everything,
Ruled an entire planet.
Their fists were iron, their heads were clay,
Their hearts were icy granite.

They treated their own unspeakably,
Much like those they colonized.
Even in a fragmented world,
They were everywhere despised.

Now theirs is a broken land,
Rotten with disease and worse:
Cities of dead, streets of rubble,
Fields barren; the place is cursed.

Yet given a chance, they’d do it again.
It’s what they are, have always been.

Roger Stoll lives in the San Francisco Bay Area and has published articles, book reviews and political poetry in Black Agenda Report, Counterpunch, Dissident Voice, Internationalist 360, Jewschool, Marxism-Leninism Today, MintPress News, MRonline, New Verse News, Orinoco Tribune, Popular Resistance, Resumen Latinoamericano, San Francisco Examiner, and ZNet. Read other articles by Roger.