My Country

Today. I cannot understand

I try to forgive

the country of my birth

Of my early years

I was grown, with family,

When we accepted

that there were other people.

Other colours. Other races.

That we lived among them.

I can never accept

That the first act of my new country was

to exclude them.

There were people here when we came

We, my people, my fathers, my forebears,

Killed them.

Women, men. Like us.

As this century moves on I come to know,

How different I have become

My country’s past is not now

one which I am proud to know

There was another country.

I knew it not

I was taught its history long

I knew it better than my own.

Today, I read  history of my own

I find

That we fought that country’s wars

Our young men died for them.

And that we gloried in that obeisance

That unwillingness to be ourselves

I cannot understand, I cannot forgive

Those who taught me thus

But I am proud. I am proud of those young men

of courage, of a depth so often called on.

And the vast expanse of green and brown.

Its people all, just as strong,

as those young men.

Yet still today. I seek,

To find those we ask to lead ,

touching with the same knuckle

as did my fathers and father forebears.

This I cannot understand.