In
Martin Place pre-dawn chill the Last Post’s last note fades. An Australian
choir sings an English song – Kipling’s Imperial Hymn – that shuffles bent with
age.
Lest
we forget.
Governors
and premiers, vicars and priests, MPs and generals and admirals and their spouses,
schoolkids and veterans and soldiers still on call raise chapped, pink faces to
the cenotaph. Cold bronze sentries stand mute.
Lest
we forget
A
solemn murmur from this place ripples, out to others ringing a thousand memorials.
Rippling mumbles like Sunday Catholics. Uncomprehending psalmody. Words so
oft-repeated the meaning is lost.
We
will remember them, lest we forget.
Lest
we forget the soldiers, known and unknown – the boys in khaki boatloads
steaming for Far side of Earth.
Lest
we forget they died for no good reason,
butchered and burned before Empire’s empty tabernacles.
Lest
we forget politicians and popes, kings and queens and newspaper barons, waving
them off with slogans and keeping the home fires burning. Lest we forget we cheered
them to their deaths.
Lest
we forget how seductive is drum beating, bugle blowing, flag waving, myth
making. Lest we forget the cost when nations equate their character and pride
with war.
Lest
we let our alliances draw our sons and daughters to foreign lands to die in
wars that are not ours.
Lest
we forget those foreign lands’ inhabitants, too, are human beings – that the cartoon
bombs on news TV embed themselves in communities, in streets, in homes.
Lest
we forget a life is a life, in Baghdad or Saigon or in Sydney.
Lest
we forget invasion is invasion.
Lest
we become accomplices, aiders, abettors.
Lest
we forget to think before we fight. Lest we fall for conjuring tricks and
causes. Lest we think we can know and impose Right.
Lest
we forget and let ourselves believe
the old Lie:
Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria
mori.
Lest
we render their sacrifice vain, we will remember them.
Lest
we forget.
