Once upon a time
In a distant land
Lived a king.
He was a bloodthirsty tyrant,
A lover of massacres,
Excited by war,
With a lust for fight.
Every day the axe fell
Upon the head of some dissenter,
Every night the body
Of some enemy
Dangled on the castle's walls.
He showed no mercy,
He felt no pain
In witnessing the horrors
Of his ****** rule.
War was his entertainment,
****** his joy.
He had no friends.
He knew
Only enemies and servants.
So this king
Once went to war,
With his knights
and his horsemen,
Aiming at a merciless victory.
His horse was the on of champions,
His sword the masterpiece of blades.
His shield was shiny and strong.
But he lost the war.
And then the enemy captured him
And put him in jail,
Almost naked, wound and fragile.
The tower he was in was cold,
The chains were tight,
His fate unsure.
Nothing was left of his glory.
The first day he cursed
The enemy and all his ancestry,
The second he promised
All the money
He could give
To the prison's watchmen.
The third he just yelled
Unrepeatable slurs
And unspeakable atrocities.
But the fourth day
Something happened.
The king started to feel.
All the pain he inflicted upon others
Was now his pain,
Their suffering was now
The same he was feeling,
Their moaning was now
The only sound he could utter.
His was the head cut by the axe,
His the feet dangling from the walls.
His the wounds and the mutilations
Of every veteran of war.
He felt all of that
And he cried.
And so he cried,
And he cried, he cried
For hours and then for days.
He asked no mercy,
For him never granted it
For his victims.
He begged no forgiveness,
Because he was aware of his nature.
But he was forgiven.
The winning king
Had mercy of the tyrant,
Hearing his crying
In the middle of the night.
He set the ****** enemy free
And all of his army
Was able to follow him
Back to his kingdom
Knowing that something changed
In the tyrant's heart.
And so it was.
The king was amazed
By an act of kindness
He could not even conceive.
He felt so strange.
Suddenly he has become
Permeable to the pain of others.
Suddenly he gained empathy
For all the suffering
He could never feel before.
He felt so human.
All his life he wanted to
Distinguish himself
From the common men.
Now he just felt
Like he could live
In the heart of every man.
When the king died,
Many years after that fatal battle,
Everyone remembered him
As a wise, tender man,
A lover of peace,
Moved by compassion,
Delighted by love.
No one knew what happened,
But everyone
In that lucky kingdom
Knew that it was something
Unspeakably beautiful.
This happens to many men:
They're cruel when they're sheltered
By power and glory
Validated by honors and praise.
But none of them can stand
The power of an heart screaming,
When the discover this ancient truth:
Money and power
Make people different,
But common pain make us all equal.
