Contemplations at a funeral

*stream of consciousness at the pall of an ornate casket…

What is valour? This word, so overused it has become a cliché, so often called upon its meaning has been warped, changed to a vile thing that glorifies bloodlust, anathema yet applied to the once noble concept of ‘nationalism’. It has become the crazed need for self preservation in a soldier who had no fight to pick who war has scarred forever, at the whim of a man who sits aloof, watching as if the ones he deploys are of no more significance than toy soldiers for his leisurely amusement. It has become the wreath of the ‘erudite’ for the headstones of those who died for someone else’s stupidity, relegated to defending the ‘respectability’ of a corpse…Valour, once the epitome of chivalrous bravery, that selfless sense of the dependence of others on you and what you have to offer in sacrifice for their survival, so it is not a deadweight, but spurs you on, their need not imbibing but arming, encouraging…sad that it has become now the tool of hypocrites declaiming on the hitherto non-existent values of the freshly deceased…