by Nick Gisburne
A thousand years of pride are battered, burned;
The North, reduced to cinders, ash, and dust.
The cities of our ancestors, returned
To rubble, by an empire’s brutal thrust.
The tyrant’s grim inventions did not rest
Until his armies stained their steel with gore,
Machines designed by criminals, obsessed
With breaking what was beautiful before.
But we, the few, the secret, still prevail.
Unbowed, we send assassins to the South.
Their wickedness will falter; all men fail
When treachery and poison fills the mouth.
Our cities smashed, we children, sly, survive,
To cut, to kill, while hate is left alive.
