Reptile of the Rock


Royalty is its own riddle, but it does not always rhyme. It may run red, true. Porphyrin is preferred. Yellow suits it only in places filled with dread and not often visited. Colors! - do these really matter? Plasma, neutrons, stars. Triumph! It desires itself! Above all! This creates need. Make alliances, humanity - to join forces is strong. Say, passerby - partnership. Is this without its share of vexing troubles? Such a combination - is it tough? Lasting or brittle? Triangle of mountains, there you stood. Each its own stoic stone. O immemorial time! How you marched right on! Strugglers, thy vicissitudes! Like shifting souffles in the pinhole curtain of night, fight! Three sisters! Megalithic and mighty! How they made the world the image of their wandering ways! Such a contest! - not without horror. Grim spectre, are you usually invoked? Upon this place of loud shouts and victorious battle-cries, the tallest and sharpest sister held its lineage high. Numerically speaking, my girl, you never were strongest. But perhaps objectively, the most venerable. Certainly in terms of pedigree it came swiftly down to this one or the smaller yet thoroughly more crowded sister in the land of the kindly west! - the aggressor, the craftsmen claimed! So then! Royal sister, thy hopes? In many lines, they rested with her neighbor to the east, blue-collared as this one was blue-blooded. Get here fast, men of wages! If you could be counted on, numbers might be almost even! Otherwise our deficit is severe. Bad! Unfortunate! Intimidating in the extreme! Huge masses of men! - when you are not part of them, these are a vast threat! How their gears leapt, churning! Wheels of their chariots, you sent dust devils as smoke signals, sparking and spinning up beneath! With technique and technology, these the taller sisters held high their hopes of making an impression. Guile was their ally! - massive misperceptions, might you be made as the result of it? Curtains, be certain! When your side is not stronger militarily, planning is necessary. Opportunity! - you must be made the most of. One thing only was inevitable - before the great sacrifice! - the autumnal festivities of the harvest! - each card would be played. For better or worse, foreboding! Thus did the high-honored captains and commanders of the tall mountain, the regal and stern-appearing pinnacle-reptiles of the rock, choose as proper. This place would do, to pin their future's dream up. No surety! Uncertainty, you ran things here! Tornados and twilight! - was there still much to do? Yes! Misfortunes by the many, you might stunningly occur. Still! Yet yoked were events! - things did not seem out of hand. By the strategists of sunlight, all would be revealed. Old they were, and excellence did become them. Upon such crags and promontory are great houses built.

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Book: Diverse Voices: The Poetry of Human Rights and the Pursuit of Peace