Ignorance

It is best to be still
The armies of the ignorant are on the march

They have seized the ramparts of knowledge 
They mock with their knowing ignorance

An ink-black foul water
It flows from the hinterlands
It gathers the regrets and anger
Latent in untended souls

It wets the roots of cynicism,
Swells the dark fruit of fear
It drains down dark roads and byways
Accumulates and abides with power

The stench, almost tangible
The rotting and rotten
A corruption so thick 
Of care and life and what has become of freedom

The intellect burns, the eyes seethe
The corpses of truth corrupted and black 
Lie about us, unburied
They lie, all about us, yet no graves are dug

We are told this is as it always was
We are asked to believe
The unbelievable
That stench of corruption? is honeysuckle

Out across the dusky estuary
A lighthouse pans the sea 
The black and gray descends
A light is snuffed

The ones who dare to know
The ones who dare to care

Ignorance now casts its dark beam
As defense against knowledge