Darkness Shapes the Hearts
by Michael Doyle

Putin sits as another dictator in a line
Certain his autocratic rule is blessed as divine
This has been the slavery of Russia's serfdom
With brutality reigning supreme in this kingdom

For five thousand years, we've known epilepsy 
As a cruel disease seated in its tragic mystery
Dostoevsky was a natural born writer and revolutionary
Who turned his rebellion and energy into creativity

Afflicted wit a thousand banes, it was in his optimism
Through which he would seek union in Godly mysticism
Robed in the very essence of the mystery of Christianity
That exceeded the questions that bordered heresy

Seeking in some way good and evil's revile definitions
When death's pain struck hard at his holy initiation
Squandered into a wastrel's vulgarity and sensuality
The protagonist of book and life was steeped in cruelty

All of the children were of somewhat dubious reputation
The Brothers Karamazov bore the soul of the Russian nation
And the Russian soul is a dark place filled with violence
As overwhelming as Russia's history in no coincidence

Fools seek to instill a mismatched Western Civilization
As though it might be super-imposed on this vast nation
Refusing to see there is little place for freedom's liberty
These are a fool's game despite all the best of sincerity

Russian's suffering enigma wraps herself in her cloak of mystery
One that challenges the best souls considering Russia's history
Father Zosima preaches that the greatest miracle is that of love
The same love laughed at by the educated as property of God above

Darkness shapes the hearts of the wicked and even those unsure
Shadowing out all of the light possible like a canker of the pure
And the demons that we all long for are those we also fight
So many preferring the deep darkness over the grasped for light

Religion is challenged as an opiate to keep the people quiet
Huddled in their ashen masses, self chained and not in riot
Love has no place in a world faking it's trappings of reason
To believe otherwise betrays the soul's greatest treason 

(c) October 21, 2020  Michael Doyle
All Rights Reserved