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Yes, my child we got it wrong; we leave you a world not of love but hate.
Every day we looked on you with affection and wonderment.
and as time went past it was becoming too late.
Our indulgence was of leisure, cartoon characters, football and fun.
With open arms we accepted the newer way into our lives as one.
The future was bright and in no need of our care.
Sorry child we did you wrong.
The churches in our communities standing upright and tall,
The visit on Sunday dressed in our best as we prayed to be loved by all.
But all became the box in the corner with pictures to lure us away,
And a new prayer to sit in comfort and be shown a different way.
While we allowed things to be swayed by a program not of our choosing
We did not notice how our precious churches changed to their mode of doing.
The future was bright and in no need of our care.
Sorry child we did you wrong.
Through that indulgence we showered you with love and affection, also greed,
With all Sunday teachings long forgotten replaced by gluttony and Me, Me, Me.
We taught air travel, flash cars and burglar alarms but not how to secure sensible order.
Nor true love, companionship, all were ignored, replaced with a carnal border.
The future was bright and in no need of our care.
Sorry child we did you wrong.
We allowed communities to disappear, the butcher, the baker and the milkman in the morn,
the High Street … now empty, replaced by an away from home conglomerate with trolleys to fill and take your money as if torn.
The future was bright and in no need of our care.
Sorry child we did you wrong.
To understand our negligence, we had fresh memories
of our loved ones and their sufferings in a terrible war.
Daily death and destruction at everyone’s door.
True hardship, the lack of supplies, food, water and certainly not a sweet to be found.
The new spring that blossomed in the decades following this horror, led to an extravagance never seen around,
and a need to ensure our children would never know of these things that happened on the ground.
The future was bright and in no need of our care.
Sorry child we did you wrong
New horrors are striking the world different from the World at War although the same.
Another enemy within, a new way which we welcomed, and it came.
Governments allowing schools to air brush history into something which was not,
whilst trying to find a new path, Churchill, Trafalgar and Waterloo confined to the Rubbish pot.
Which should not have been our way.
Sorry my child we let you down, perhaps you will want to turn it around.
© Percy Chattey
Photo by cottonbro studio: Pexels
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