Either They Will Rise or They Will Fall

(by QMS, Frackville Penitentiary, November 2013)

Humanity once had a harmony

A dreamtime in which all relations shared:

A world in common and a common world

Where all were one in nature's sacred care.

Before there was the wall there was the wound --

The ancient pain which scarred the world to come --

An evil with no date or monument

Which changed the rhythm of our nature's drum.

From wounds grew walls, dividing lands and lives

And kingdoms grew upon the commons' graves:

The common lands became the prison lands

And lands of freedom became homes of slaves.

The walls will grow as high as wounds grow deep

And kingdoms smile as long as commons cry,

And this the riddle to unlock our world:

That freedom cannot live 'til prisons die.

Two futures haunt these lands of growing walls:

Either they will rise or they will fall.