In a quiet backroom of the Legislative Yuan,
a young American lecturer stands
with the day’s lesson in hand,
and a fire in his chest,
tutoring, training, shaping
responses with corrective words
as the aged senators, faces steely,
listen and repeat.
Then in a moment of pause
when examples turn to the current scene,
his voice brims with curiosity and proffers:
Why not declare independence
and declare it now,
for this may be the last chance,
before the tides of history swallow you whole?
The world will stand with you;
the free world still has your back,
but not for long.
And in that moment,
he hopes the message will pierce
the walls erected by time and geopolitics,
a suggestion offered by a concerned ally.
But then—
silence falls,
and the senators speak.
They, sons of the mainland,
clad in the armor of their legacy,
reply with firm resolve,
their voices not soft, but weighty,
each word a stone dropped in a lake
with ripples spreading.
We cannot,
we cannot,
they say.
For in independence,
we would lose our place,
our seat at the table,
our dominion over this island,
and worse—
our grip on power.
Their eyes are war-worn,
and there is no warmth, no vision
of freedom’s distant shores.
Their hands grasping for the reins
of an empire they still dream of reclaiming,
they shudder at the thought of it slipping away.
If Taiwan stands alone,
they whisper,
We would lose Our privileges,
our advantaged position,
our claim to this land’s future.
And there it is—
the weight of their decision,
not history’s tides,
but their own self-preservation
the chains that bind them.
The American, stunned,
stares at them,
for in this moment,
he sees not warriors
but self-serving bureaucrats,
flesh and blood
tangled in the tethers
of their own ambition.
And in their glance,
the vision fades.
The dream of freedom
shattered
against the jagged rocks
of their own fear.
No declaration comes.
Not today,
not ever,
because the price of freedom
was too high
for the ones who never truly
belonged there.
© 1976, Kenneth Koziol. All rights reserved.
