The stories are told of the many who died;
Some of them rest in the Abbey.
The bricks there stand firm over hundreds of years;
But some stories fade with the passing.
The pillars still hold but the truth, sometimes shaky,
Whispers and shudders through ages,
For the towers we built and the books that we wrote
May still stand in their shells while eroding.
We hold to this name, from a time and a place
When the soil was red with the anguish
Of the battles decided and conflicts now closed,
With the truth stifled in its own history.
The name and the place both matter far less than
The heart of the battles we fought there.
While the ones clothed in white all gather to wait,
Will they find us still living their story?
The Consolations of Writing 