I am almost assured

I am almost assured

that the wail in the distance

is my own child,

and that my grandmother's brothers

stood in the rubble

of a war they understood

poorly.

Everything that happened

was and is seemingly avoidable

except for the conversion,

insensate,

of some form of cosmic fuel

to some form of cosmic power.

Which we do not abet

when we think we do,

and do when we don't,

not because our mechanisms

are corrupt,

but because the mandate

of righteousness

requires an invisible

magnetic core

of endless, unbelievable,

evil, fertile

carnage.