The Covenant of the People
Behold the land once girded by a sacred bond,
Where fields were plowed by hands both proud and fond;
One voice, one altar, one ancestral dream,
Flowed through the nation like a hallowed stream.
Not born of conquest, nor of empire’s flame,
But of shared hearth, shared faith, and honored name;
They walked as brethren, high of heart and mind
A nation not by borders, but by kind.
Yet in the courts where power’s shadows breed,
Ambition’s hungered whisper sowed its seed;
A serpent’s promise wound through marble halls
“Rule far, rule wide, let foreign crowns be thine,
Take seas and oil, take kingdoms not yet thine.”
Then banners rose to skies once calm and mild,
And from the shepherd was unmade the child;
Gold, once a servant, seated itself as lord,
While truth was weighed against the banker’s hoard.
No longer did the coin reflect the field
The harvest’s sweat no longer stamped its yield;
Instead, a phantom minted in the night
Replaced the honest measure with deceitful might.
The people, once a covenant of free
Were tallied now like cattle, property;
Taxed in spirit, tithed in blood and bone,
Unheard, unseen, yet claimed as sovereign’s own.
Yet mark this well, for destiny remembers still.
A nation is not broken by mere will;
Though kings may bargain, sell, deceive, betray
The soul of a people does not pass away.
For deep beneath the ledger and decree,
There stirs the ancient heart of memory;
The spirit old as mountains, stern and sure,
That whispers: We were something pure.
And when the time-appointed dawn shall rise,
When truth stands fearless, stripped of vain disguise,
The people, waking, shall their birthright claim
Not by conquest, nor by wrath or flame,
But by remembrance of the sacred whole:
One land, one faith, one undivided soul.
Tyrants bargain while they may;
The nation waits, not dead, but held at bay.
Let embers sleep, yet never think them dead;
For coals beneath the ash are crimson-red.
When honest hearts remember what was lost,
The flame returns, no matter what the cost.
ca. July 2025
