The Day the Eastern Bells Stopped Ringing:

I still remember the day the sunset fell upon the old land…

The land over which the bells sang,

A symphony of pianos.

The warmth of the sun fading,

The shadows along the harvest fields evading,

Every whispered brush and weed on the horizon.

This is the masterpiece upon which this story unfolds.

To the heart listening, embolds

We then travel back in time,

Upon a vessel created by wind,

Lost in whispering rhyme.

The bells begin ringing again.

Subtly, softly, the smaller ones being led even by the breeze.

The calm, cool zephyr passes over them like a glance.

Revealing, unveiling, a time lost, a time forgotten.

I remember the children of these days.

So sober. So lost.

Indeed, they were.

Thrust into encampments, taken from their rightful caregivers, indoctrinated into believing the lie.

The lie about the change they were planning.

In a swift wind, they reframed the fabric of society.

Eliminating even the memory of the old.

And the ways the bells rang all the way into that day.

They rang…

They rang…

They never stopped…

They rang like thunder.

What is left of that era. 

That golden era.

Eternities have passed.

Yet, really, only a century has passed.

The remnant of those days…

The bells have been collected and turned into bullets.

Others stand erect and buried beneath the tides of time.

Fading…

Fading…

A whisper.

A memory.

This is how you murder a memory.

An age.

A golden age.

The bells now lay, cracked and buried.

Buried within the sand of a distant time.

There once stood a civilization so great…

So vast…

That it had dominated the earth.

It did so in the name of Jehovah.

And by the name of Jehovah, it conquered.

It conquered in love and the vitality of life.

Has it truly been so long?

Have we truly allowed ourselves to forget?

That distant land,

That vast, unconquerable land that stood for centuries.

How great did you fall, o’ Tartaria!

It was not by weapons that you did fall.

Nor by plague or storm that you met your end.

It was through a quiet assimilation.

A docile and unviolent invasion.

The peoples of other lands with their evil ideologies

Poison astrology chose to overtake you.

And to burden you with their plight.

They came first as children.

Unknown to even their orphan mothers.

Their clothes as tattered rags,

Seeking help and aid.

They marred their appearance,

And sand a consistent dirge of mourning.

For their state was no more and no less

Than a tragedy.

How bold you were, o’ Tartaria,

How compassionate.

How noble.

To extend your helping hand.

For in that time,

Even these children of darkness,

Who marred their appearance,

Who did so for sympathy’s sake

And who for evil intent did take,

Were of a far lesser number.

For at your height, o’ Tartaria,

You were grand.

You ruled through and with our LORD,

All the land.

And the noble architecture of your creation,

What you had created through our LORD,

Was evident across all the world,

Your entire empire,

From its home in Asia,

To the tip of South America,

Reigned.

You were vastly, unutterably unconquerable.

And you know why?

Who would want to conquer a loving and peaceful people of this breed?

When the children of darkness came,

They overtook the population,

Quickly subduing the gentle nation,

With force, with coercion, with manipulation.

Never before had the Tararians seen such deceit,

Such deception and such lies.

They began to take up weapons,

Anything they could,

They began to take up words,

As evil as they could,

For a lie against the innocent is as evil as a gunshot,

They subdued them until the truth about their existence,

Was erased from memory and history book.

When Jehovah God saw the evil happening in the world,

That all of His innocent children had been destroyed,

He flooded the continents, nations and all.

For He resolved.

Having resolved to never again destroy the world by water.

The children of darkness were more shrewd than the children of light.

O’ Tartaria! How great is your loss?

Until only the children remained.

Only Tartarian children were remaining.

The children of darkness did what they would with them.

Packing them up, sending them out, placing them into trains

Headed for sanitoriums.

The orphanages of long ago,

How tall you stood?

You housed a nation of people.

A nation of people who were never again,

Never again permitted to speak the truth.

The mental asylums of long ago,

How tall and how grand you stood?

Having stood even in the architecture that you had created,

O’ Tartaria, a nation of people, who were never again,

Never again permitted to speak the truth.

The truth about what happened to you, buried and erased,

In the single stroke of evil men’s swipe.

The world fairs came, erecting massive monuments of glorious splendor,

In a matter of days?

Was it really possible? Did anyone really care?

It was a way to eliminate the records of a previous age,

A golden age.

An age that proved that God was center.

That God not only existed but triumphed.

An age that proved that vulnerability was beautiful.

Innocence is beautiful.

Children of darkness, what have you created?

Where are your legacies to posterity?

Where is your honor to ardor?

No matter,

The children of light,

The vulnerables,

The children,

Are the ones who will inherit the real life.