Sonnet

[avevale_intelligencer]

This is no victory. A man is dead.
One man it took almost ten years to kill.
And now a host of men will rise to fill
His shoes, and lead the grand crusade he led.
Will they be white, or brown, or black, or red,
Or green? Who knows? But come they surely will,
And we will never know their names until
By some new outrage we are bruised and bled.
To kill is nothing; he could kill, and did.
It did not change our minds, except to make
Us ever keener strangers' lives to take,
And this he saw, and gloated where he hid.
Nothing is gained; the war, unchecked, goes on;
If we had changed his mind, we would have won.