The commandant sips tea
over the sounds of the shots,
unable to hear them anymore.

All the old colonizing nations
now sip their tea, burned out
on order, progress, all the rest.

The tea, the cup, and chair on which they sit,
all made in China,
itself an old empire before old was old,
exhausted, but gatherine youth,
slain by Japanese bayonets but getting better.

Let us hope when they again sip tea,
satiated in god-sactioned power,
they hear the screams of the new old colonies
where their cheap, exotic, not-so-foreign tea is made.

subscribe to site or just to poetry