Walls Poem by Mary Champion

Imprisoned by the brutal Russian Bear,
desperate citizens sought to escape,
but the adamant wall stood in their way.
Some worked round it, under it, over it,
and too many were killed in the process.
Too many more remained under constraint.
Persistent dissenters held their protests,
calling for the wall to be demolished -
this detested barrier to freedom.
But, seemingly impregnable, it stood,
and the anger of the captives mounted
until the energy of their fury,
firmly suppressed and contained for decades,
finally detonated - exploding
in November of 1989.
Fearless now, they began to tear it down -
attacked it with hammers, chisels, bare hands.
Fragments were long retained as souvenirs.
The end of history, proudly proclaimed,
democracy spread from the Atlantic
all across to the Western Pacific -
discounting China with its own great wall.
But oppression is a determined beast,
so, it proved to be but a brief respite.
Slowly, and sometimes surreptitiously,
the monster regained its strength and malice,
fuelled by the swagger of the victors
and insatiable greed of oligarchs.
The hated Western Wall is now long gone,
but the divisions grow ever deeper
and the barriers that have grown between
humanity and justice are just as high.