Maiwand
A long forgotten war
Was fitfully remembered
By lion's silent roar
In the middle of the park
Where shadows of the past
Were like memory, dismembered
They scarred upon the grass
With the coming of the dark
A stirring in the trees
Still silver in their daylight
A shout upon the breeze
Echoed louder from the stones
A lurking spirit barked
As a shadow in the sunlight
Awoken in the park yet
A world we hadn't known
I looked upon the lion
So furious, so raw
A statue cased in iron, but
What use had been that roar?
A hundred years of fury for
The fallen and the few
When evil came upon us,
Maiwand lion, where were you?
The night fell on the park,
Still flashing blue and white
And I prayed into the dark
On that dreadful summer night
Then
A voice I knew so well
Whispered softly through the tears
With a heartbeat I could tell would
Whisper peace to rolling fear,
And the Lion and the Lamb
Showed me all that He could see
From injustice in the land
To the chains of slavery
From oppresion of the poor
By the rich who didn't care
To the ravages of war
And the wake of that despair
"For all of this oppression,
You have taken silence too.
You were the Maiwand lion,
When it mattered, where were you?"
A long forgotten war
Was fitfully remembered
By lions' silent roar,
In the middle of the park
Where shadows of the past
Were like memory, dismembered
They scarred upon the grass
With the coming of the dark
I feel like if you're reading this in the future or from far away, you might need some context. This weekend, our town was the location of a terrorist act; three people were killed in a park, where this statue, a war memorial featuring a lion mid prowl and mid-roar stands. I wanted to make a kind of layered point about how we act, and who we are when it matters.
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