the present is in our children's hands
their race is well begun
the future is their children's lands
uncertain, unspoken, undone.
the baton has been handed
the transformation complete
spectators now and relaters,
our Glory days are done.
the karma bequeathed to the future
awaits our children's children's hands
we shape their thoughts, (and so hope, restore)
our broken landscape our damaged shore
As I stood watching and taking part at my son's wedding I couldn't help but reflect on the courage youth always has in it's future. When we set out ~ when? 1972! the world had just stepped back from the Cuban missile crisis, France was recovering from student riots, the iron curtain more firmly divided the world than ever before, China seemingly ready to collapse from it's cultural revolution, and Capitalism stood poised to smash the unions and separate the rich few from the many poor. And here in South Africa, an increasingly recalcitrant and truculent apartheid Government was deepening its hold and its propaganda on its citizens, poisoning the few and disenfranchising the many. The collapse of our society seemed at hand.
Such a morass the world was in!~ who would raise a family in that?
Who would tackle this mess before us?
Yet we lived our moment and waited for our time when we would have the means and the ideas and the courage to give the future generations ~ our children ~ the world we would have liked to have had.
So many things are so very much better now: yet so many more seem irreparably damaged: Climate, Economy, and the deepening divide between the haves and the have-nots, new things seems so threatening once again.
Yet when I looked at them, and the wedding guests, it seemed to me that they had that same courage and hope, and these new challenges would find their generations ready to deal with them. And the question of division is addressed at the personal level, and it seemed to me that there was still a role for us, the fading generation: one of bringing together communities, of breaking down cultural and ideological barriers ~ who better to show how to live than those who have survived life?
And I can't say that this thinking was a sequential process, but it tumbled around in my head, and the words above took shape and have been sitting with me: now they have their own space. They seem to pull together all those thoughts.
All images Copyright (c) the author
