We built a house against the storm,
a fragile pact to keep us warm.
We shaped its beams from hope and dread,
and prayed the winds would pass instead.
For years the ancient terrors waned ....
the plagues grew shy, the wars restrained.
The famines thinned, the empires fell;
the world stepped back from history’s hell.
We thought the future finally spars,
a gentler age beneath the stars ....
a world of circuits, trust, and trade,
a peace our parents never made.
But triumph bears a hidden bruise:
abundance strains the house we use.
The rafters swell, the timbers creak;
the wires hiss in sparks, oblique.
The world grows older, tight with fear,
counting its losses year by year.
Honour rises, sharp and proud;
reasoned whispers, drowned by crowd
The calm we built begins to shake;
the cost of plenty comes awake.
The factions flare, the tempers fuse....
for the world is ours to lose.
Four futures wait beyond the gate:
The creaking house still holds its ground,
patched and trembling, yet still sound ....
a compromise of rust and grace,
a shelter in a narrowing space.
Or else the quilt begins to tear,
each jealous patch its own affair.
Borders thicken, dreams grow small;
the world retreats behind its wall.
Or darker still: the war‑gods rise,
their hunger burning through disguise.
They stir beneath the ash and bone,
demanding debts we thought unknown.
Or planet, pushed beyond its will,
unleashes drought, disease, and chill ....
a reckoning without a foe,
a chaos no one meant to sow.
World order isn’t fate or throne;
it’s what we build, or leave alone.
The storm is coming either way ....
the question is .... which house we’ll stay?
For the world is ours to choose.
Or .... this world is ours to lose.
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5 February 2026