Truth and consequences (for Bradley Manning)

Uncover the truth, and they’ll have you standing,
naked, at attention, outside your cell.
Or if you’re in the limelight, they’ll say
the deaths of scores will be upon your head,
while they themselves have on their hands
the blood of thousands upon thousands.

Reveal the truth but know
the truth shall make you free
to be reviled and mocked and raised aloft
like the serpent on a pole in the desert,
a figure of fear and revulsion,
but, at the last, the cure.

*           *           *

(c) Gregory V Driscoll  2011