Author's note: This poem began with some fragments I wrote 20 years ago. Unable to devise a conclusion for the work, I would have thrown the fragments away had not my then-roommate, Lynn Sanders, suggested I keep them. "Maybe you'll finish that poem someday," she said. I guess I shouldn't have doubted her!
Irony (Magneto)
Son of the thunder's rumbling,
Forged of a frozen flame,
Your heritage a shattered land,
Dust was all your claim.
You were born in the heart of a Holocaust,
A tempest to shatter an age,
Your mettle great, yet twisted
By the forces of hatred and rage.
Though your heart might have powered a hero,
Those forces, they melted your soul
And recast it anew, in shape fearful and true,
And thus are the shapes of your goals.
Now, lord of the thunder's rumbling,
You lead children of frozen flame,
But you'll bequeath them shattered lands,
Dust and death they'll claim.