Smoke long ago swept clear of this grass
Drew back in slow shame from covered morass.
Surly ribbon bands did curtain this stage
Where history’s drama threw over the page.
Rolling with echo sound fields gently hilled
By hoof and by heel their ground rudely tilled.
In sorrowing shriek the flower and tree
Still sing their subtle soliloquy.
Both sides in their sight were haplessly right
By furious haste they bartered their taste
Of life’s grand beauties held most dear
For circumstance that governed here.
Nameless faces of bygone years
Identity drowned in rivers of tears
Each one never knowing quite all he did sow
Reapers to collect what no debtor did owe.
Whispered and trodden down with the dross
Go stories of legend now veiled by moss.
Under this musty mantle of clay
Cold bones in raptured oblivion stay
With countenance dimmed, faint light to be found.
On dawning tomorrow their trumpet may sound
Hailing them forth to amiable abode
Where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt or corrode.
A humble meadow we used to see.
Henceforth and eternally shall this be
Numbered among sites for sacred elation
Revered as a Temple of misplaced dedication.
Generations with wisdom in pleasure do meet
Yet shrink from refiners’ tempering heat.
Gilded experience, though brilliant in thought
Abandoned unheeded, stands wrought for naught.
Amid vainly attempted reconciliation
In the name of God, and others, a nation
United without regard for the past
Eagerly dashing to fight to the last
So noble a cause as to warrant such strife
Still we press on: For Country! For Wife!
Granting no mercy to anguished or maimed
Freely staking what can’t be claimed.
Loud beats the drum and keen is the cry
Of man, of weapon. Even shall I
Remind this trite world of why we should try
And for whose glory we do valiantly vie.
From such the fight takes its splintered ends:
Worst of societies and best of men.
Precision fit by careful calculation
Tweaked over centuries of mistake and renovation
Conflict is but an unruly machine
Each little cog, a breathing being.
Its master still pining, yet failing to see:
Freedom never was, nor will be Free.
