On the Wall We Have Built by Mason Carter

On the Wall We Have Built Once we were prey to the frost and the fang and the flood in the darkness, so we raised up a wall and a hearth and a law to divide us from wildness, tamed we the river to run in a pipe and the field to run straight in furrows, built we the roof and the road and the clock to keep chaos at distance, man is no longer a beast in the storm but a builder who governs the tempest, we have escaped the wild hand of the earth and stand safe in our reason. But the wheat in the furrow still answers to rain, and the rain never learned of our reason, and the pipe that we laid for the river still drinks from a source we have never created, every brick in the wall was a stone from a hill, every beam was a tree that was breathing, and the lung that repeats in the dark of our chest still bargains with air we don't govern, so the clock on the tower is fed by a sun we can shame but can never redirect, and the road, when the fault line beneath it awakes, is unmade in the spa…