Beneath the Sunset Skies of Hope

 

 We gave our youthful souls,

Our strength, our dreams, our finest years,

To halls of learning and generations yet unborn.

We built tomorrow with quiet, faithful hands,

Never imagining that our own tomorrow

Would be a lifetime of waiting,

And yesterday a place of tears.

 

The years have gathered upon our shoulders,

Like dust upon forgotten dreams,

Like wandering ghosts beneath the mopane trees.

We taught the young to dream of greatness,

To seek the truth, to stand with pride.

Yet now, beneath the fading sunset skies,

Our own dreams lie scattered in the dust,

Their dying embers struggling against the night.

 

Some lie sick, without the means to heal,

While others count their last coins

To put a little food on the table.

And some, too proud to beg,

Have learnt to drown their sorrows,

Behind a weary smile,

Over a glass of Tennessee whiskey.

 

We buried friends who waited beside us,

Who once believed that justice would arrive.

Their names have faded from the corridors,

Their voices silenced by the grave.

But the promises that kept them waiting

Remain, unanswered, among the living.

 

Can those in authority truly hear us,

Beyond the speeches and applause?

Can they hear the quiet weeping

Of those whose dignity has been stripped away?

Can they look into the eyes of the forgotten

And say that all is well?

 

We ask not for your generosity,

Nor riches from the nation's gold.

We ask not for pity or favours,

Nor charity wrapped in gracious words.

We ask for what our labour earned,

For the dignity of our remaining years,

Before our trembling hands grow still and cold.

 

What worth is service to a nation

If those who served are left behind?

What honour lives in solemn promises

That follow faithful servants to their graves?

What conscience sleeps so peacefully

While those who built the future

Are denied the comfort of their final days?

 

And still we wait.

And still we wonder.

How many sunsets must we watch?

How many friends must we surrender to the place of many crosses?

How many prayers must vanish into silence

Before somebody remembers that we are still here?

 

We were once the hands that served,

The minds that guided,

The shoulders upon which others rose.

Now we are the ageing faces,

That the passing years have made invisible.

Our children watch us grow weary,

Our grandchildren ask why we are sad,

And we struggle to explain,

Why a lifetime of honest service,

Has ended in such sorrow.

 

Remember us while we still breathe.

Time is a debt no wealth can pay,

And death will not postpone its day.

Do not bring us flowers when we are gone,

Do not praise our service when in the place of many crosses,

Do not speak of honour over silent coffins

When justice could have reached us while we lived.

 

So hear this cry within the silence,

Beneath the darkening skies of hope.

Let justice reach the hands that laboured,

Before the final light grows dim,

Before our homes become houses of mourning,

Before our final residence

Becomes a place of many crosses.

 

For hope is not an endless river,

Nor patience an eternal flame.

Even the strongest hearts grow weary,

Even the brightest embers die.

And a nation that forgets its servants,

That lets them perish waiting for their due,

Must one day face the silence of their graves

And answer for its shame.

 

Fiat iustitia, ruat caelum.

(Let justice be done, though the heavens fall)