We stand atop the pile of melting skulls Crumbled into the dust of our forebears; empire; crests And before this war, like all wars, a fading of the light.

That emperors wane, children breathe The ashes of their dying force.

Struggle, bluing, fades. Stars burst, shedding their color; Piercing the skin of murderers and infants alike. This blood is shared In an infinite circulation — dripping from the trees, Breathed in the crop, shed in the veins.

This flesh be shed: in the immortal rite Which compiles bodies, faces, places, and names. History: The dirge, the lament Of the emperor before the ground gravel Of deserts without water or life.

To be born — pulsing green life. Innocent body of the earth, Naive to the sculpted shades of light And to breath.

Under the shadow of death, markets form, crest, And fade into the silence of gilded toys Stolen from hands smeared with dirt.

Let this be war, peace, Or silence. But let not the pallbears of empire — Laboring in the paddies, wasting in the slums — Bear the writhing madness Of these impotent flights of death.

All shall be returned Even the yoke of empire's fist, Possessed by the fading heat of time.