Uncompromising Poem by Dalan Jahan

Even when the state slept,
history remained awake.
No day was ever neutral.
Beside an iron bed
hung partisan saline—
hunger institutionalized.
A handful of elections,
a handful of prisons.
He closed his eyes.
The map shuddered.
Hawks disappeared
into a constitution stripped of language.
He did not bargain with fever.
He did not bargain with solitude.
He did not bargain
with the red years
sealed inside the archive.
Death arrived
riding a white horse
and asked only once:
"Compromise? "
He answered with silence.
Then, barely audible—
Is power ever above the human?