Come listen, let me tell you, friend
The nature of the man you face
I am one of those who can still trace
The blood of kings within his veins
You will not find me bend and scrape
And go with head bowed to my grave
You will not see me kneel and beg
Forgiveness from another race
The world forgets, but I do not
When all your complaints were as dust.
I am the sorry remnant of a mighty race
A shadow of my father’s grace
A whisper where my forebears roared
A dog with half a lion’s face
But still, you see, enough remains
That all your anger and your hate
Moves me not, and never shakes
The knowledge of what we have been.
Come, come all about me now
Like laughing jackals at the lion’s end
Tell me of old imagined crimes
Insult the land my people made
Pretend we never were, and never claimed
A better destiny than slaves
Pretend we were the source of every harm
Forget the courage and how brave
The battle was to give us thrones
How often others cast us down
How often we then rose again.
Pretend that those we overcame
Were innocents and womenfolk
Instead of warriors just the same
As we were then, and some remain
Too few to change this bitter fate
Pretend we offered nothing, then
We only stole and took by force
While walking on a road we built
While all the comfort in your life
Was purchased by our sacrifice.
Oh, my friend, you should have seen us then
Not through the eyes of bitter men
Not through the lies of those we beat
Who scribbled hate after defeat
The history you know and cite
Was written by a loser’s hand
Or someone casting back a net
To dredge up every negative
Defame them as you please, my friend
I know my kind were better men.
I see it still, it will not fade
And what a curse it is to see
A glory that no longer shines
A struggle that should humble all
Who saw that rise and feels the fall . . .
We said we’d never be again
The slaves that Romans, Vikings, Normans too
All tried to make us in their turns
Before we became the masters of our fate
And of yours, too.
You scold us for the chains you wore
When every hand was using them
And we alone, among the rest
Said ‘Lay those chains aside, my friend’
When we alone, of those that sat
Atop the world, masters of all
Put that power to the end of it.
And every nation that we broke
Each one that we defeated at some stage
Was also, too many times to name
A place that we did liberate
At the cost of our own blood
And to the passing of our strength
When wearied by a thousand wars
The greatest fought for other men
Our crown then slipped
Each and all forget that it
Fell when we were saving them.
Today our living are but half alive
Like ghosts who are already dead
They bow to every pride but ours
Respecting every difference
And learning well the lesson that
Our own flag is to be disgraced
Our own people are to be abused
Our own children weep abed
And nothing, now, is to be said of it.
But half my father’s steel is still in me
His half of a diminished store
The blood has thinned but not entire
The body’s weak, but there’s still fire
Smouldering within, the last cold embers
Of a mighty flame
That burns, and burns, and burns away
The shame that you would put on me.
The truth is, friend,
I’ll not apologise to you
That my father’s father strode the world
Or mothers here on these green shores
Once birthed a race of giants that you feared
Nor will I now submit
To the treasons that my leaders speak
And if what shadow of defiance comes from me
Is so little a thing as these mere words
Still, still, it is something still . . .
When others bow and fawn and beg
That I will not, and won’t till Death
Ends all our words and thoughts and deeds.
