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