Tennyson wrote this centuries or so ago, and I ran across it during the Moslem riots in France. We've been at war, Christians, Jews and Moslems, for a very long time. It seemed timeless, so I decided to try to make an updated version of my own with the same original spirit that Sir Alfred managed to put into it...somehow.

Beautiful City
by Alfred Lord Tennyson

Beautiful city, the centre and crater of European confusion,
O you with your passionate shriek for the rights of an equal humanity,
How often your Re-volution has proven but E-volution
Roll’d again back on itself in the tides of a civic insanity!

And now, my version:

Beautiful Ciudad
by Karen Cole-Peralta

Wondrous City of Lights, Parisian originalle,
Bent to the War, Moslem Jew & Christian banal.
Torture and hedonism lend to your spired Tour d'Eiffel,
The results of all tolling church bells medieval.
Which cannot erase any the things ha' been done;
In the name of God as side, side as God;
Nothing new is under the blood-swollen sun.

This seemed timely due to the recent huge riots in Paris. Looked like all them French Moslems decided to get uppity. Strangely enough, it was written quite a little while ago, altogether. The reason I used the Spanish word for city, "ciudad," instead of the French word for city, is due to the act of terrorism awhile back where an entire train was blown up somewhere along the tracks to Valencia, Spain. I believe myself that we are now altogether in the wasted throes of World War III.

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