&Welcome to Word and Question, and to Crosses and Cradles, if this is your first time here. Please, look around, I haven't written as much as I'd like, especially lately, but perhaps you'll run across something you like. For more information see one of my previous W&Q entries, or go to Shredded Cheddar. If you're playing, post a link or a poem in the comments. If you aren't, please go read the poems that others have written as well. They're always fun.
As usual, I'll be awarding phantom points if you can guess the question (the word would be nearly impossible with this one). I'll reveal it in the comments later. I think it's more fun that way. Here goes:
The Litany of Apathy
Upon the fields of war it stands
Walks beside a lover, hand in hand.
It kneels on cold, cathedral floors
And dances on the open moor.
Beside a stream, it sleeps
In peace lies down, in sorrow, weeps
But the lonely ones, the tired
Sit upon a stone. The souls no longer fired
With intensity or love of beauty
In despair, or apathy await
The fealty they've sworn to fate
They find no joy, no sense of duty
Nothing but the patter of the rain upon the rock
Soaked and broken, no heroes, they
Solitary souls they sit, and say
The litany of apathy, "No good has come to me
No good of me shall come, but waiting
I shall stay, upon the rock, beneath the rain
And let the souls more brave than mine
Carry on their show, for they but feign
To smile on those stone cold floors
And dance upon the barren moors
And hand in hand they're all cut down
In fire they burn, in blood they drown
And whence their joy, their hope?"
So, bent and alone, without a care
No gentle touch this soul can stir
For he alone may foreswear
A foolish oath, and stand a man
To be, and hold, and dance, and kneel
The truth to seek, the sun to feel
And love to know at last, and understand
