The Question
The conflicts of humans are timeless and vast;
who knows when they start or how long they will last?
And who can explain the most basic of these:
The seeking of Conquest, which naught can appease.
What is the purpose, and where is the gain,
when both parties often will suffer the pain?
If finding the answer will bring some surcease,
perhaps this poor effort may bring some someone peace.

The Appeal
Come unto me Muse, gentle lady called love,
and send inspiration from your place above.
Assist me in finding the words that are just
to demonstrate Conquest is nothing but lust.
A sop to the Victor, a bane to the prey,
and often the laurel wreath withers away!
I pray thee, sweet mistress, thus lend me your tongue,
for you alone speak to the old and the young:
you plumb the sweet depths of the hearts of pure maids,
you know their deep hopes, and what makes them afraid;
you tread the dark paths of hunters and thieves,
and console the torn heart of one who now grieves.

The Argument
The question is whether the battle is meant
as the grand culmination of all that’s been spent,
or if Conquest is just the beginning of rule,
where the conquered side finds that it now plays the fool.
Can Conquest be merely an end in itself,
or is it a subtle attrition of Pelf?
So let us examine the foes in the fray,
where cunning, not courage, may carry the day.

Part the First: the Foes
Which side shall be blamed as the instigator?
As in other things, it takes two to make War.
Perhaps it is beauty that causes aggression;
quite often a dare, or a modest confession.
O, no! Not intended to serve as a challenge,
which naught but a cry of “en garde” shall avenge.
But rather it’s meant, like a measuring glance,
to show that there’s always some portion of chance.
A pleasing terrain, or an overfull vault,
may instigate plans for a full-scale assault.
Aye, greed and desire, or the urge to control
another one’s life and another one’s soul.
Or just idle fancies, played out to extremes,
can cause blood to flow, and burst innocent dreams.
The foes are like oceans that join at their tips:
they toss their heads proudly, they sway at the hips.
Tempestuous, stormy, they wildly careen;
at other times proudly and gently serene.
Their waters might mingle, their storms may be shared,
as the hoof beats of stallions that long have been paired.
But, sundered by continents vast as themselves,
mysteriously deep, despite how far one delves,
they keep the uniqueness inherent in all
of the minds of Mankind since the time of the Fall.
But must that now mean that these warriors are strange,
somehow transcending the normal man’s range?
Contrary to this, it may truly be said
they differ but little from those they’ve misled
and been misled by since the dawning of guile
led Eve to dissemble, and Adam to smile.
Perhaps one is dark and the other one fair;
one plods on the ground, the next soars through the air.
But countenance matters no whit to desire,
and the journey’s the same to the dam or the sire.
Would they contemplate battle or seek the campaign
if they foresaw the strife or imagined the pain?
Who searches for motive unless to give blame!
To think of the misery soon to transpire
would dampen the spirit, and put out the fire.
Ah! Mortal we live, and the same shall we die;
Perfection’s a thing even God would decry!

Part the Second: the Battlefield
The Battlefield is no intentional place,
marked with bright banners, or imbued with strange grace;
the setting may vary along with the time,
as Death is dispensed without reason or rhyme.
It may be a ghetto or palace of gold;
the seats of a carriage or in a ship’s hold;
a house when the sun shines, a beach when it rains;
the mountains are chosen as oft’ as the plains.
But where e’er the place, let it never be said
that the feelings weren’t high, but the blood wasn’t red.
We think of a struggle on gossamer downs
while yet, everywhere, darkness always abounds.
So where is the point? Is the question we ask.
Do we relish the contrast, or seek for a mask?
If it is the first, it may truly be said
that the struggle for life is set off by the dead
and the dying of things far beyond Dylan’s light
confuses us more -- mayhap darkness is night!
Aye, cloaking the actions that many deplore
(like the thought of the savage, red-fanged carnivore
brings delicate shudders to the lady or gent
as they witness the struggles, secure in their tent,
but daintily devour their portion of meat)
yet few seek to end ‘til their desire’s replete.
And if it’s the latter, what is it we hide...
Is it the fact that true feelings have died?
And so we seek places to prove that we feel
the same things we did when once we were real;
but now we are phantoms, and drift throughout life
seeking emotions we found in that strife
that once was a pleasure, but now is a need
to prove to ourselves that we still can succeed.
And so we retreat to the fields we have known
where seeds of our Conquests have always been sown.
Ah! Smooth as famed Flanders, and white as a ghost,
pure as a virgin are the grounds that play host
to the presence of men and the acts they’ve come for,
and blameless of them as the bed of a whore.