Cracks were there at the beginning,
Parged and buttressed,
For centuries.
But the edifice held.
A people grew and prospered,
On common ground,
And common cause.
And found the way forward.
Sacrifice and hardship,
By the best of us,
Made way for wealth and ease,
For the rest.
But an inheritance was forgotten.
Brought to the point,
Broken, battered, bewildered,
Looking for rest,
And a way forward.
A choice emerges,
A better Deal, a future,
A Manifest Destiny,
On higher ground.
But dimly heard voices,
In the tone and timbre of the past,
Call in desperation,
As they recede into memory.
It is the whispers of our honoured dead.
By W.N. Branson