Thalasar The Conqueror Poem by Daniel Brick

I have come to ask you, Poet of Today,
to fulfill a promise you never made,
to men you never knew, to justify a past
you could not imagine. I am just a slave,
accustomed to dashed hopes, ready to bow
my head to deflect the next blow...
In Hades, milling with millions of eidolons,
I make bold to plead with you to fulfill
a promise that might ease a wound that
never heals: it is vortex that drew all
into its depths, then expelled them to this
dark place... I was just a slave-bard,
who perforce sang the praise of a beast
parading as a man. He took the name THALASAR
from the first man he killed. He lived
THE WAY OF THE SPEAR, a descendent
of an ancient lineage of mentors, who taught
fighting as if it were an ART, violence
as if it were a culture, killing as if
it were connected to beauty. Thalasar
had been their most apt pupil. He was
their masterwork as killer and artist.
He exulted, I, Thalasar the Conqueror,
know the secret of the Highest Beauty.
It is hidden beneath piles of wreckage
and the dead. Fear my Wrath, people of
the plateaus and lowlands! The Columns
of the World collapse under my Spear!
Oh, the dread SILENCE OF THE WORLD
as he led his army forward, guided
to his next target not by scouts
or maps, but his unerring instinct
to the places people thrived, pursuing
profit and comfort, buying and selling
with honesty because the kingdoms
of the plateaus and the low lands
with an over-much of prosperity.
Their slave-bards sang not of war,
but commerce, not of killing but
money-changing and trade. Oh, and
they sang the most touching love
songs and marriage hymns...
Thalasar smashed that world in balance
with each kingdom he entered, repeatedly
robbing the plenitude, then hoarding
what he stole in vast desert caverns.
He was the richest man anywhere, but
he neither bought nor sold, made nothing,
destroyed everything. The god he worshipped
was an immense maw above a huge belly!

But one day, like any other day,
in its exchange of air and wind, rain and
drought, light and dark... Thalasar
forded his last river, crossed his last
desert, left behind his last oasis, and
entered his next conquest, but he stood
amazed in his war chariot. He dropped
his great spear and looked in shock
at the ruins of his first conquest.
He had come full circle: before him
lay proof he had conquered everything
in a great circle of universal destruction.
His six massive horses pawed the sandy soil
of the first place he had rendered lifeless.
He had reached the end of his existence,
but not of his life. Thalasar wept, his tears
the only moisture; he cried out in agony,
his complaints the only human sound. His six horses
scuffed the dry ground and stirred up dust, which
clogged his throat and only moans spilled out of his mouth.
His charioteer, faithful no more, edged backwards and leaped
into the air, and hit the hard ground, and ran, along with
twenty-thousand armored men. The six noble horses, rearing
and neighing, lunged in six directions...

From the central mountain of the World, the gods and goddesses,
who had feared Thalasar the Conqueror, saw a wide swath of
destruction ringing the World. And the silence of the World
... terrified them.