The Truceless Contest

Is what Balint calls it, the truceless

Contest between peoples, the struggle

To shape their afflicted, unappeased

Pasts. What sticks in the mind is truceless.

Not even a truce. Never a truce.

Peoples may not be as coherent

Entities as the sentence suggests,

But the sense that there’s never a pause

In justification or jousting

Gives a shudder of recognition.

The contest, in this case, has no end

And no winners except in the sense

That whoever is still contesting,

Whoever hasn’t lost yet, has won

More struggles in the truceless contest.