Endurance Dawns

Our fortresses sacked, smoldering, lay in ashen ruin;

Legions of warriors, knights of our realm, lay bleeding

In frozen fields of farms and the icy, torn land
Of pastures, that only yesterday had borne the steps
Of running, laughing children and young, expectant lovers,
Suckling calves and lowing cattle, hens gathering chicks;
Home to babbling brooks, now red with blood.
All the land a gory bed.

Such ruin, such loss, such senseless abandonment of
Life, spirit, and ancient harmony with earth and her sky!
Nature ran amok while human hearts,
Surrendering to Satanic darkness
Gave vile birth to pillage, rape, plunder and destruction
To the promised land of this proud race.

Up now!
Awake! Arise!
Take heart. Be brave.
No longer droop in sorrow and sin!
Lay down the burden of despair.
Take up the banner of hope
And cry aloud, from every mountain top
For the freedom of soul, heart, mind and flesh.
What now? What is this?
Shark, deep, hot, piercing,
Copper-tasting and gut roiling
Bile forth from the depths of
My own dark innards.
Sudden and fierce,
Betrayal and treachery,
Such pain! Burning life!
Hot, flashing, stabbing through my flesh
Searing bone of skull and breast.
Cold steel, dagger ripping deep
Into my soul, tearing my breath away,
Piercing my heart.

To my knees
Falling into my own blood
Spilled upon soil, splashing upon rocks
Coursing, flowing, drenching
Earth with my life.

Taken by the hand of my own kin,
Life leaps into boiling seas.
Flesh melts away, as
My soul merges with rock and ash.
The days of sorrow for my own
Evaporate as my life flows into my
Mother’s soil and fertile flesh.
Mother, sister, daughter, wife
All cut me again from the cord of life.

And I die away from it all
From them all, and their cries soften
To soft whispers and murmurs
Of the hopes we all once carried
Through each long night and into
Each bright day of the forever
String of days that now spills
Into the soil… to take root
Until they spring forth again
In some other world lit
By some other light which
I may never know
As I never really knew this day
That dawned upon my death.

Written by Steven Lindsey, 2003; Benicia, California. Revised May 19, 2013; Granada, Nicaragua.