Remembered

During the end of September and the first of October Analia and I went on a vacation in China. It was not something I ever expected to do but last year on our cruise in Europe we talked to several people about cruises they had been on and many of them rated their cruise down the Yangtze as one of their favorites.

We flew to Shanghai and then to Wuhan where we boarded a ship for an incredible journey down the Yangtze. We sailed through the Three Gorges and saw many incredible things. But I think the thing that really struck me was huge monuments that the emperors had built to themselves. The Forbidden City was beyond imagination and the Terracotta Army was truly mind boggling. During our last few days some thoughts came to mind and I wrote them down in the form of a poem. The name of this poem is "Remembered" and I think it truly expresses what I will remember about this trip.

Gale Wolfenbarger
25 November, 2010

Remembered

In ancient China 6,000 years the people lived and died.
The feudal lords ruled o'er the land beneath the Asian skies.

The culture that was founded there loved beauty in all it's forms.
The people strove for harmony from the day that they were born.

They planted gardens, a place to rest and ponder things unknown.
They set their hands to carving jade to capture thought in stone.

They praised their gods with bells of bronze and the ring of lovely chimes.
They built them temples of gold and wood to last for all of time.

They honored all their fathers past and kept their records well.
They placed their coffins high on canyon walls, how? today no man can tell.

Their rulers thought to live again and rule the land once more.
So even in the afterlife they need prepare for war.

One ruler built an army of terra cotta men.
With horses, swords, and chariots, and so to fight again.

But in this life their enemies came in endless hordes
To try and take their lands from them with spear and knife and sword.

And so a wall they thought to build to keep the danger out.
It snaked across the entire land to turn the hordes about.

But other walls were also built and they of earth and stone.
These walls would keep the people out and the emperor alone.

A city built within the walls of where the people lived,
But there to go they weren't allowed, the law it did forbid.

Within the forbidden city, the people he need not fear,
Nor could he from within those walls their plaintiff pleading hear.

The people's sweat he used to build his majesty on earth,
Great palaces built below to await his second birth.

Six thousand years have come and gone and emperors long since dead
Their palaces of wood and stone now mark where once they lead.

But their people have continued on with pride in who they are.
To see these ancient wonders we come from near and far.

We come to look with wonder at what their hands have wrought.
And try to take a piece of it with trinkets that we've bought.

But history is not purchased with dollar or the yuan.
It's purchased with the very lives of women and of men.

It's purchased with the things they've learned and so have brought to pass.
When trinkets all have turned to dust, it's our memories that will last.

And so we must remember it's not the things we build,
It's how we love each other and how our lives are filled.

Gale L. Wolfenbarger
11 October 2010