Member Poem

(A Metaphor For Time, War, & The Frozen Echoes Of The Past)

They stand in silence, rank on rank,
With hollowed eyes and chiseled flank,
Each carved from dust, each bred to thank
The nameless hand, the shrouded blank.

Their lips are sealed in frozen oaths,
No tongues to sing, no voice for growth,
Yet still they march in earthen loath,
A legion forged in fractured troth.

The years have kissed them, rough and worn,
Each crack a battle, each scar born,
Yet never weep, nor break, nor mourn,
For time is kind to those forlorn.

Beneath their feet, the roots have crept,
A silent siege where whispers wept,
And yet they stand, and yet they kept,
The broken past their hands had swept.

Once flesh, once fire, once free of dust,
Now stone-bound soldiers, bound in rust,
Yet even stone begins to crust,
And even kings dissolve in gust.

What war, what blood, what endless fate,
Could carve such ghosts, could lock such gate?
Yet there they stand, in mute debate,
And watch the world—forever late.

Perhaps they dream of breath and skin,
Perhaps they long to march again,
Yet war’s embrace is inked within,
And stone knows not the taste of sin.