I’ve been moving toward a new kind of poetry lately, and this is an example. Let me know what you think of it.
<b>The Warrior’s Response</b>
So, one more race has fallen?
It does not concern me.
I am not the sort
To mourn for allies lost,
And I do not surrender.
My friends are as
Links within a chain,
And I do not have time
To tend the broken,
While I am busy mending
A greater coalition.
No little thing is worth
Despairing over.
Sorrow will not drive away
A thousand banes,
Nor can a warrior surrounded
Retreat from his aggressors.
Give me arms and health,
And if I do not break my persecutors,
I will make a show at least
Of my undoing.
My father and his father
Perished to barbarians,
And if I die with sword in hand,
I will not water
The field of my foe’s triumph
With fruitless tears.
For who I am to mourn myself,
When nearly all is lost already:
When beauty and refinement,
Holiness and grace
Mean nothing?
I watch an ugly world turn uglier,
As every sacred mystery
Is mocked and disregarded,
Dissected by the surgeon’s knife,
And brutishness is praised as vigor.
I will not mourn myself
When all the world has felt my pain.
Am I to stand alone?
All the better.
No fear this way
Of striking a companion,
And I fight best surrounded.
Come!
Let us see how well you fare
Against a single foe.
A remnant of humanity
Has yet some strength,
And I am waiting.
Come!