They mortared their harbour with lilac stone,
hoisting Philosophy in every arch;
yet underneath, termites feast on syllables,
chewing lofty treatises to pulp.

They tolled bronze bells in the name of Justice,
but tied each clapper with hush-money thread:
one strike for the merchant, one for the priest,
none for our Sister they sealed in shadow
when her bright truth nicked living bone.

She was the youngest candle,
voice as thin as dawn, twice as piercing.
They glimpsed the ember she coaxed from forbidden pages,
poured midnight into her mind
and baptised her scream as rest.
Now she sings in fractured birdsong,
a queen of beasts no psalm can bridle;
their treachery crowns her in thorns.

Behind shuttered glass they toast Knowledge,
scrolls stacked like ribs of a sunken leviathan;
ink seeps from every margin - black sap
drawn from secrets crushed too deep.

Oh, resplendent irony,
citadel of chalk on a swelling grave:
your cedar boards breathe sugared rot.
Each pilgrim's step wakens the corpse beneath,
urging it to dream of daylight.

Lanterns flirt with the wind,
spilling gold rings on water they dare not taste;
let a single storm leap the quay and those halos
will jitter like coins in a gutter,
truth quivering in the sputtering wick.

Call me heretic, wave-worn cur,
yet I will stand on the shoal when your varnish curls,
naming every creed you polished hollow:
three masks carved from the same bleached driftwood.

And when the tide finally drags your banners under,
remember the Sister you drowned in silence;
my laughter will surface first,
splitting the bones of your borrowed throne.