We Were Promised Greatness

We were promised greatness, a purpose grand;

We built our dreams, bags of cement in hand,

Of a dam standing up to nature’s torrents,

For our people’s pride and our leader’s warrants.

Through toil and sweat, we strained,

To feed that loud machine

Our bodies ached, yet we pushed on with glee

For pain is the path to modernity.

One comrade slid into the unit’s maw

His screams crushed by metallic guffaw,

Reduced to paste and shards of bone,

Our payment for an unpayable loan.

We scooped him up, a pile twitching and warm

And fed it down the chute as chloroform.

There would be trade-offs, we learned.

Our path was steep, for greatness must be earned.

As time went on, the dam grew into the valley

The shadow of progress cast over our community,

We saw a beacon to light the people’s way

To tame nature and bring a brand-new day.

But gradually, rice became sawdust

And cabbage turned to grass

There was no one to take the dead

Except the drunkenly desperate.

There were no dogs left to scavenge

the dikes flowing with skin and bones

They spoke of sacrifices to be made,

Of toil that mustn’t fade,

Seeing the duty needed to uphold,

We labored on, doing as we were told

So, with sickly arms and fatigued hearts,

We wiped our wet cheeks, never to part

The machines we operated with revolutionary glee…

One night, the heavens split

And the reservoir filled with its fury.

Our dam bent and groaned

And a crack slithered across it,

As the tides came upon us.

Freed from their entombment, bones flew to the sky

Like missiles trampling our village of molded mud.

I closed my eyes

And went adrift

With corpses, bones, and bricks.

I swam with the current

Past the valleys and rice patties and villages,

Past the pagodas and cities and schoolchildren

I pushed myself onward

To live better and free,

To live, finally, for me.