Prayers for deliverance and justice,
desperate hope that there might be
an end this side of death.
They waited in the shadows
and asked with mournful truth
when exactly is enough?
Righteous troubadours went,
and struck a solemn chord,
with songs of Revolution.
Men and children went,
to fight, to die-
to live.
Girls too, went,
not much more
than children themselves,
They wept for their fallen,
and learned to cry
like grown women.
With brilliant fires
and cold steel,
the dawn rose once again,
In the shadow of
the Valley of Death.
Such children as they were,
they too, wept,
For mothers, for home,
for brothers
laid to rest, eternal,
in Sunday best
of dirt and blood.
So silently we watched
through thousand-mile windows.
What could we say?
Were they Visionaries,
or rebels,
or traitors?
Enemies of the public,
who raped and killed,
and spilt blood
across virgin snow?
We would give them titles,
but we never learned their names.
One by one they rose
and then fell.
Their flesh turned to ash,
then memory, then nothing.
But still, one by one they came.
Knowing their bodies would die,
they knew they had to fight
else all would be lost.
So spake with rakish grins,
and the burning tears of martyrs-
"Shoot, coward,
You are only going to kill a man."
