Upon the bruised and trembling earth we stand,
Echoes of Eden flicker through the dark;
A voice begins – Is the architect’s hand
In every fire, every broken spark?
From Gaza’s rubble, thunder drones on high,
Sudan swallows its children in the sand,
Across Ukraine’s winter, iron locks the sky;
In distant towers, kings decree and command.
Are they ciphers in the book of suffering,
Or authors of new torment yet to write?
A thirst for blood, a hunger for a king,
Or veins still pulsing with ancient light?
They were shaped to choose, yet choose to wound;
The powerful grasp and hoard the golden scales.
Is mercy a myth, hopelessly marooned,
When, for every mourner, a despot prevails?
See how, in parliaments of polished stone,
Laws wrap the rich in an invisible cloak,
While those who call the rot by its true name
Are rendered silent beneath the yolk.
Yet small, stubborn lamps burn in the night –
A mother’s lullaby within broken walls,
A stranger sharing bread despite their fright,
The whisper: resist, until justice calls.
But can kindness counter engines made of lust,
The slow grind of commerce, the cogs that roar?
Who shaped these empires built on brittle trust,
The coin’s gleam brighter than the cry of the poor?
Am I present in forgiveness and the seed
Of compassion sown amid ashes and fear?
Or is it the scorn that follows every deed,
Biting at hope until despair is near?
Or both – are these children neither wholly divine
Nor utterly damned, but split down the seam?
In every tyrant’s laugh, in the protestor’s line,
Both image and shadow war for the dream.
Whose likeness endures in each stained hand?
Is it power that writes the rules and keeps score,
Or those who keep standing, refuse to disband,
Inventing new mercy through anguish and war?
Let the evidence gather, let memory decide,
Not just among the palaces and tombs –
But in crowded shelters where survivors confide,
In the courage to rebuild as hope resumes.
Perhaps humanity wears a shifting face:
Divinity’s sorrow, devil’s delight entwined –
A puzzle of light and darkness pressed in place,
The sum of what’s chosen, the image designed.
So let the reckoning blaze and the mourning be heard,
Who we are, what we could be – carved in time’s clay,
Our own reflection, blurred, fierce, and absurd:
Echoes of both, stumbling toward day.
