Be Upstanding, T&T

A while back, a fellow Trinbagonian blogger posted something that really made me stop and think. Slacker, over at Slacker's Chronicles had reworked our National Anthem to reflect his appraisal of the current state of Trinidad and Tobago. I read it over and over and moved on in silence but Slacker's version moved on with me and I couldn't stop returning to it in my mind. Eventually I wrote my own version and I will post both.

I invite others to think about it and to write and submit their own versions via e-mail [guanaguanaresings@gmail.com] and I will include them here. Feel free to submit as Anonymous. If there are "problems", I will just ask you to edit or ask your permission to do the editing myself. I don't think that ancestor Castagne will disapprove. Until we can be upstanding in our daily lives as Trinbagonians, please leave this space during the playing of our beautiful National Anthem which is featured first in today's collection:

THE NATIONAL ANTHEM OF TRINIDAD AND TOBAGO
By Patrick Castagne


Forged from the love of liberty,
In the fires of hope and prayer,
With boundless faith in our destiny
We solemnly declare.
Side by side we stand
Islands of the blue Caribbean Sea,
This our native land
We pledge our lives to thee.
Here every creed and race,
Find an equal place,
And may God bless our nation.
Here every creed and race,
Find an equal place,
And may God bless our nation.

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REWORKING #1
Submitted by Slacker



Forged...
A love, a liberty
Fired...
All thoughts of hope and prayer
What boundless faith in destiny?
Will I live another year?

Side by side we stand
On these islands of the Caribbean Sea
Tsk! Our native land
Each day lives are sacrificed in thee

Hear every creed and race fight for an equal place
God!
Please help our nation

Hear every creed and race fight for an equal place
God!
Please help our nation.

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REWORKING #2
Submitted by Guanaguanare



What do we know of liberty?
Paralysed by hope and fear
Like slaves to alien destinies
We want to fly from here.

Shipwrecked, still we stand
Staring at these Amerindian seas
This won't be OUR land
Until we learn to see
In every creed and race, the aboriginal face
Of the spirit of this nation
Here, by this Trindian place will we be embraced
When we ALL bless this nation.

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AWAITING YOUR REWORKING HERE

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"Patria est communis omnium parens" - Our native land is the common parent of us all.
Keep it beautiful, make it even more so.
Mweh ka allay!