You have a choice of treasons:
will you rebel
against the stuffy statutes
labyrinths of numbers and paragraphs
where lurks the minotaur of judicial doom
at death row’s end?Or will you silently betray
in dormant duty
those you claimed to serve, protect, release,
and let a fraud of freedom
turn them to gaming targets
or nullify their worth
as trash of war.Now choose your treason
and endure
the torture of justice warped,
standing condemned by those who comandeered truth
yet owning while your heart still beats
the gush of freedom.Or will you return
your duty done
your solemn oath fulfilled
your uniformed smile
captured till forgotten in some fading frame,
before you finished cracked and out of date
in some stranger’s garbage.Brad. Maybe your choice is made.
Siôn Aled Owen
“Ironically, brad (with a long ‘a’) means treason in Welsh and that led me to ponder how Brad would have been a ‘traitor’ whether he had blown the whistle or not. Clearly, though, the worst treason morally would have been to keep silent.”