Come, let us reason together

Come, let us reason together
It was at the gate we waited
hoping that the wind would change,
and still within our hearts that cavity
of sure despair.
It was denial that sustained us,
and the flame of rhetoric
that threw its light upon us;
mutatis mutandis we shall win!
And we do not.

The war grinds on
and victory dies at the breast;
mother love is its undoing.
Second hand, her own sustaining
feeds our weakness
and preserves our infancy.
Most certainly it is the toys
of adult contrivance that we hurl
out of the motherland,
out of the treasure store we filled,
out of the crib of hate
we cannot understand.
~