Today’s sentence:
“Here in the land of plenty, the well of dignity is empty: good enough to fight the wars and pick the fruit, but not to stay.”
Inspiration and Observation:
This is the closing lines of my poem, New Triangles. I really had hoped that the wave of cruelty would ebb with the defeat of you-know-who and the consignment of this twisted ideology to history. However, it was not to be, and the shining city on the hill, has been returned unto the mire.
When and if they wake from their nightmare, they will see as Yeats said, “All changed, changed utterly,” however, there is no birth of a terrible beauty here. The process of reconciliation and rebuilding, in the wake of the wanton pillaging and plundering, will take decades to achieve.
Who knows if Liberty’s light will still shine as brightly on the other side of this tide of darkness? I said to a friend yesterday, “The tide is running hard, but you’ll take the sway. I’ve a feeling it’ll rise and fall, like all tides before. We must make ourselves not like Tim Robinson’s Aran limestone, but like granite of Sean a’ Phéistín in Oughterard.” Best wishes to you and your family, Nicholas.
You’re among the brightest lights along the coast in a tempest, guiding those who go in peril on the sea, toward safe harbour. Together, good people will build an archipelago of kindness, as a bulwark on that further shore against the gathering dark.
The sentence lodged for later use as:
“”Here in the land of plenty, the well of dignity is empty: good enough to fight the wars and pick the fruit, but not to stay.”
It evolved as:
- If I was to list the drafts that arrived me to these final lines, now years ago, I’d need a longer internet.
Paper Never Refused Ink! 
The creative process is one of endless rewriting/rewording. The featured sentence is loaded with the inconvenient truth of a nation turned in on itself.
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Thank you Rosaliene. That is so true.
Writing is life. An endless journey of change. If you’re the same person you were five years ago, you’re likely not editing yourself hard enough.
We’re watching it all from a distance, and it surely pains all right minded people to see. No one wants to watch a country inflict such harm upon itself. The potential of an incredible nation sacrificed on the alter of greed. It deeply saddens me.
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So true about our endless journey of change as individuals. As for national self-inflicted harm, we’re going to need lots of “lifehouses” to survive the fallout.
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