What was I, back then, a man in power
Rose against the tyranny of evil,
Now I am alone, and unsure of where
to go. So I look back and try to see.
Powerless
What I did think, before I left then
Lived in hell, with no morality,
There I saw virtue spent, and honor was
far cheaper and more lesser than wages
Where did I learn honor? Such grand ideas
Saw them from heroes' stories, blessed,
A clean truth; the only one, radiant
Then I rose, and tried to speak, I saw evil,
Tried to counter, speak, pray, spread light, and was beat
Savage punishment, books burned, was branded,
All the evils of the world they called me,
Marked with iron by law of ignorance
I loathed, and nearly questioned fate, yet still
Brought to the peak, to the edge, I still said,
"I am right, and they are wrong. I will win."
Powerful
And so I tried again, waited for a tilt
Thus I spoke better, argued more strongly,
Gave the gospel of truth, convinced the men,
Gave them a rain of bread, which came with teachings,
Told what was good and ill, eyes were opened
Toward my new faith, my new goods, made joy.
Eyes were opened, saw great problems now seen
Once was poverty, of culture, now not.
Ways fixed, rich men were sinners, they were purged.
Wrote a creed, wrote history, made it right.
Reject greed, put lust, pleasure was virtue,
News controlled by my new priests, no pain known,
And so no pain was there. My perfect faith.
Thus ten years passed of great bliss, no strife there.
Yet there were heretics of dark evil,
who loved truth, and thought of struggle, prime virtue.
They wore long white cloaks to cover their skin
and revealed their face, thought of a great pride
Then they exposed secrets, revealed the pain,
They said, "Man slowly drowns in decadence,
And now we are degenerate, rotting,
Degrading ourselves. We lie to distract
us, but now seek the truth, lest we become
stupid, shallow, ignorant. Now we must rise
before it becomes too late. That we say."
And so the people, deluded, misled,
Revolted, destroyed the fragility
of the lie, which once stopped greed with pleasure,
like a group of fools, which they were. Enraged.
They had forgotten the evils before
from which I stopped and ended with my faith
Nature
I was made to stop preaching my pleasure.
At the great temple, they surrounded me.
They tied me to a great pole, and then whipped
and whipped me with lashes of burning pain
leaving marks on my skin. Then I felt rage,
I began to cry out, but nobody,
Nobody heard, or then nobody cared,
For ten days of shame I was on the streets,
I asked for help, but was spat at and mocked,
Again, and again, nothing I could do
Man was disgusting, now I hated Man.
I hated my own kin, so on the tenth,
I left, and never came back.
I was in the great wilderness, alone.
And no burdens of men, or leadership.
Free of sin, free of stress. I am clean.
Man is sin. Man craves power. Man craves wealth.
And when he reached his peak, he collapsed and
Went on, not caring for me, his leader.
I ran with deer and slept on trees, felt wise.
Thus ten years passed of great bliss, no strife there.
Simply me alone, a free man, lived well.
Thus ten years passed of great bliss, no strife there.
On the twentieth year, strangeness I saw,
a smoke coming from the evil city,
I thought it was burning. Then was a bug,
A big one of metal with a man in.
Strange clothes, strange tongue. I understood him not.
Then were many others with wide blades,
in strange hats. Their swords were fat and revved loud.
Thus I looked at them, with a great surprise.
They were the city I had abandoned,
And yet I was the only true good man.
