Trial and Punishment: An Epic Poem

At the beginning of Its imperial rise As guardian of the galactic horizons The Entity had adopted a circumspect presence But saw how cultures could quickly descend Into nuclear oblivion, rampant AI, exhaustion Of mineral resources in their lands, gas or ocean And this was the outcome for virtually all And even the few that didn’t fall But survived to expand into space Could invade worlds with a voracious taste For terraforming, mining, disrupting ecologies Eradicating food chains and emerging biologies Viewing all as secondary to their own ambition With devastation following their every mission.