Submitted by David Whish-Wilson on Tue, 26/05/2015 – 09:25

I was recently asked to write an inscription, essentially a ‘Wish for Peace’ for the new City of Canning War Memorial, by local artist Susanna Castleden. Here’s the terrific Paul Daley, contextualising it in discussions around Anzac Day, and including the full inscription:

http://www.theguardian.com/news/2015/apr/23/anzac-day-should-be-quaranti…

“For those of us spared the terrors of war, to be worthy of our dead, is to remember them. It is to remember that they died, the men and women of this community, in their thousands, in faraway lands, interred in the ground upon which they perished.

It is to remember those who loved them; their fathers and mothers, wives, children and friends. It is to remember that the pain in the hearts of those who loved them, who lived after them, never healed; the promise of their lives together, unfulfilled.

It is to remember that many who returned were also harmed, so that they and their families continued to suffer. When we wish for peace it is to remember that the lasting meaning of their suffering – their warning to those who follow – remains unheeded so long as there is war.

For while their service has ended – their battlefields covered over with meadow, field and forest, jungle and desert sand – let us make of their absence a powerful presence. May we forever hold them in our minds, and the loved ones they left behind.”