Due West across the
great expanse of land
they came to find
a life and prosper
and multiply to form communities
and towns that drowned out
the echoing cry of those
who were here before,
but who were no more than
the beasts of the field
that man should conquer,
for he must be fruitful
and multiply upon the earth.
They came with wagons
and supplies, two by two,
and forged their way
across the heated plains
in dust and sweat
and in the lives
and tears of those
who could not survive
the harshness of this place.
With their intrepid kind,
who came with European ways,
they brought religion and
a powdered gun as their
weapons of choice
to hunt, to kill, to wipe clean
and then to convert this place.
This the manifest destiny
of a land and peoples
now conquered and dotted thin
across the vibrant totemed land
that was once theirs,
and their ancestors,
but is now and forever
long gone from them,
to become the sacred place
of god’s sovereign will.
16/1/2017