“No Shortage of Kings”

---146BCE Roman forces breached the walls of Carthage. All inhabitants were sold into slavery. The city was burned to the ground and the land was sown with salt.

Have you ever seen a desolate place?

Where people now try to hide their face?

I wonder if there were once children

There playing ball and running with pets,

Before some army rolled them all away?

I marvel how there can be worldwide

Rations of water, food, fuel, even family,

When there seems to never be a scarcity of

Bandits, butchers, overlords, scalawags-all

Poised to rule, casually casting a frozen die.

The great lies-deflection and misdirection,

Point to the lesser developed peoples and lands,

While failing to boast of local eradication of

Countless Native American tribes, not to

Mention buffalo herds the size of Delaware.

Dead languages can no justice demand-

It’s a feat worthy of stumping Columbo, what

The voyages of Columbus helped fossilize.

Ships from afar raped treasures and delivered

Endless supplies of soldiers, salt, and kings.

Time remains the great unsullied equalizer.

Hunters with ghosts in their eyes conjure

Themselves great warriors, most deserving of

Their spoils rather than rank blank purveyors

Readying self-realized killing fields anew.

In the meantime gardens do brim with bounty,

Beloved dogs and cats live like royals unaware

The value of a sip of water or piece of stale bread.

Prideful to live in a land heralded by the French

Queen, greeting all-in her sharp tapered crown.

---Yeats wrote of “No Second Troy’ – yet what of Carthage?