Sonnet

They used to have everything,
Ruled an entire planet.
Their fists were iron, their heads were clay,
Their hearts were icy granite.

They treated their own unspeakably,
Much like those they colonized.
Even in a fragmented world,
They were everywhere despised.

Now theirs is a broken land,
Rotten with disease and worse:
Cities of dead, streets of rubble,
Fields barren; the place is cursed.

Yet given a chance, they’d do it again.
It’s what they are, have always been.

Roger Stoll is a Latin America/Caribbean solidarity activist with the Task Force on the Americas, a three-decades-old anti-imperialist human rights organization. He has published articles, book reviews and political poetry in Dissident Voice, Resumen Latinoamericano, MintPress News, Black Agenda Report, Popular Resistance, Orinoco Tribune, Marxism-Leninism Today, Counterpunch, San Francisco Examiner, ZNet, Jewschool, and New Verse News. Read other articles by Roger.