Unmarked Graves

Lost in the annals of time long past over, Deep in soil, shallow and unkempt, Brothers and sisters, in ground hallowed sacred, Their blood, this earth, we will consecrate, Their eyes once boiling with life, Their hearts bursting with passion, With dreams they carried forever, Through days that promised the world, Then came the black winds burning, The beasts with fire in their hands, The execution squads surrounding, And their children in pieces at their feet, ...and who stood watching? From El Mozote to Amritsar, From Nanking to My Lai, From Srebrenica to Algiers, From Wounded Knee to Sabra-Shatila, From Tiananmen to East Timor, From Warsaw to Darfur, From Guernica to Halabja, Their spirit lives in defiance of it all, Graves of our fathers vanquished, Entombed in their furrowed prisons, Soldiers programmed, show no mercy, Following their orders from tyrants that hide behind politics ...and the world stood watching, Regret, nausea and rage, "Never Again" was the phrase, Lest not our conscience we betray, ...as we stand passive in our guilt.