Alone

In a cage a single man

Soldered off from the rest

Sits in silence and, it may be said,

A peaceful acceptance

Of the unending

Solitude- his foe, his friend

Since the day he opened his unforgiving eyes .

And so the sights of war

Of play and of friendly spirit

Seem to him like trials

Of a foreign world far and beyond

His own, of iron wrought.

In the world live men together

Loving, laughing, speaking, fighting:

A team, a group, a family

A government, an army -

Tied by the silken threads of

Warm sentiments intangible.

And so this lonely man,

In his dark and cold prison cell:

Seems to them like they behold some

Strange and frightening manifestation:

Of the face of pain and of sorrow.

And as the world kills,

Screams, stabs:

Each man trying to make

The world his own:

The lonely man sits quiet

And still, living for himself:

No blood, no hate, no love

No gore.

The steel in his gaze, the stead of his stance-

Are virtues to the general brothers unknown.

I stand and watch these

Strange apparitions

In a silence that confounds me:

For I am a lonesome, caged soul

In a shared world born:

So I think of what I

Have been told.

Of what I see.

And finally facing my own soul,

I question the truth of the world in its whole:

What is the answer to my question,

The one we have always known:

Are the children of the universe

All for all, or one for one?