A Eulogy for Justice (poem)

A Eulogy for Justice

Let us pray.

O, Justice, you beauteous creature, lost to us at the hands of those who swore to protect you!

Your fathers warned us, told us to take care, to keep our minds sharp and our senses keen,

But did we listen?  No.  For a time, we watched and listened and thought and remembered…

But soon, like sands upon the beach, our memories were washed away in waves of new events and fine distractions.

Justice, meantime, was locked away in a gilded rusty tower, a distant gleam on a dreary horizon.

Too soon, the tower was all we remembered, forgetting what great beauty lived inside.

And the protectors we’d assigned, in their long dark robes, realizing that the tower was so much easier than the beauty to tame and corrupt, did so, blood-stained quills scratching furiously to seal her fate, etching wall after wall of leather-bound chains, so that shortly, even the tower fell out of our minds.

And they, the black-robed traitors, with every pound of their hammers, raped and ravaged what was left of darling Justice until she was torn and trembling on the floor of her crumbling keep.

She may not yet be dead, but who can tell?

And so, this day, let us bow our heads, and think of Justice, the light of civilization.

May she rest in peace until she finds her way back home.