The Rubicon

The river runs, dark and wide,

It does not bend, it will not hide.

Once it cradled boats and song,

Now it mourns for what went wrong.

The water shudders, thick with grief,

It bears the weight of lost belief.

Once, men came with dreams and steel,

Now they kneel, yet cannot heal.

They crossed too fast, they paid too slow,

A shadowed debt the depths still know.

Gold was promised, names were sworn,

Cities fell, and none were mourned.

The land they seized turned into graves,

The fields they burned could not be saved.

The throne they built was set in flame,

The victors vanished, just the same.

The Dnipro whispers, hoarse and low,

It speaks of things no man should know—

Of hands that clutch, of eyes gone blind,

Of greed that rots the heart and mind.

It watched the folly, heard the cries,

It swallowed sons, it drank their lies.

And when the banners turned to dust,

The river flowed, as rivers must.

No war was worth the price they paid,

No blood could cleanse the choice they made.

The water waits, it does not break—

It knows how soon all kings will wake,

To find their crowns are rust and bone,

Their names unmarked, their sins alone.

And when the echoes fade to night,

When silence swallows wrong and right,

The river will remain, still and long,

To weep for all who thought they’d won.