Letter: Our isles of rest lost forever

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 27: Dear Sir,

One of my ex-students Glen Place spoke to me about what he saw as a part of the problem with Bermuda’s youth and I was struck by the similarities between his thoughts and a poem which I had recently written, called The Lost Isle:

O’ Isles of Rest, once so secure, where few were rich but none was poor.

Where children frolicked o’er the moors, and old men lingered by the shores.

A jewel in a coral sea, where foreign travellers flocked with glee.

Their souls refreshed by their sojourn, they vowed that soon they would return.

 

The winds of change must come they say, but winds blow good and ill away.

Greed and Lust like storms did swirl, changing fore’er this idyllic world.

Nature’s gifts your sons abused, who now, like zombies, walk confused.

They maim each other with no remorse, the “Isles of Rest”, forever lost.

 

They asked, you gave, without constraint, a generation now with no restraint

You let them stray from paths divine, the twig is bent, the tree inclined

The seed you’ve sown is now mature, your off-springs now beyond the cure.

You fed their appetites so base, now nature’s anger you must face.

 

So weep ye ancients, who deplore that old Bermuda is no more.

Today you wish someone to blame, Pandora’s Box you wish to tame

Well, look in the mirror and you will see the cause of all your misery.

Clevelyn AJ Crichlow

Paget