Dialetical Reassessment

In all the wars We fought for the side That did not fight for us Showing glad bravado in the fray And we died In the frantic sorrow of friends ... Where morality has no answer For it, the tragedy of all our life Is not where we belong Or which side of the fence We climb down to fight But what did we own? What was right Or any gift at all ... For even to eat in a public space We were made to crawl Until our backs could take no more Up against the silence of the wall One woman stood ... a woman Mothered our courage to march Into self immolation And claim a sliver of history. For the birth of that determination We have a title to nothing else Except hope An ever enduring faith in something Possible beyond ourselves It is the legacy of a dream ... Not the wasting years of wars.