Trodden Steps
By Jane Hyphen
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How many trodden steps?
Pain contained, muted
In this our survival trance
We were treading the abyss
The sparks of our youth
Extinguished in the mud
Around our sinking boots
Heaven’s mouth was wide
And Hell we stored inside a cell
Which gently cracked in time
And wept as we could not
We played the part..of something
Faces, voices, come and gone
Thunder, booms, cracks
The music of our days
War reigns, men are leached
Like soil wasted by cruel storms
We remembered comfort
Through long tunnels saw it glow
One day to return, if only
To our flesh and bones
As months turned to years
Suffering baked, we fused
To forever bear its common crust
A shell in which to hide, yet
Some went on to live as shells
With nothing left inside
To blot the aftershocks
Loss, losses, won and lost
In the end it was about loss
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with nothing left inside, we
with nothing left inside, we shrink into ourself. yes, indeed.
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Vivid and moving.
Vivid and moving.
The wonder is too, of the many who did manage to 'get over it' in the sense of living useful and 'normally happy' lives afterwards, despite the long trauma. Maybe partly that they endured physical injury and shock a bit less deep, but also God's grace to them to be able to somehow move on helpfully. And letting violent invasion occur widespread wouldn't have been an option, even if in retrospect many criticisms can be made of the management. Rhiannon
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Do you think it was partly
Do you think it was partly that the conditions they left behind were not what we would call comfortable that any survived at all? I certainly couldn't have lasted even if I wasn't shot. How many would have had heating or running water or always enough food? It is not just that their suffering stopped an invasion - what they went through resulted in so many things becoming better that might not have happened otherwise. It was a victory over the ruling classes. Not the whole war, but the start. The worry is that it's being erroded now, and people are remembering a victory for freedom even as we are losing free universities, legal advice, prescriptions etc
"We remembered comfort" this really brings home how grim it was, that there was no comfort
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