At the recent National Commemoration on the 101st Anniversary of the signing of the Armistice at the Hall of Memories at Pukeahu National War Memorial Park, Year 10 student Rosa Crawford gave a poetry recitation 'Ending Song' by former WGC Science Teacher Airini Beautrais (2009–2010).

Ending Song

Arini Beautrais

We who are weary, spent, in doubt,
we who have hoped the world could be better,
we who have opened the dreaded letter,
whose brightest stars have been put out,
pause at the news an end has come.

We who have given, and shouldered so much,
we who were shelled, and gassed, and shot,
we who are dead, and we who are not:
the empty sleeve, the patch, the crutch;
blink as we slide into some strange dream.

The trumpets blare, the whistles shrill,
The band blasts out its wild refrain.
There is dancing for joy, and dancing for pain,
siren and signal and ringing bell,
a surge of noise, a surging calm.

Southern spring, a wind-blown sky,
the orange-lit east, a fading gloom,
a beating of feet on the drum of the womb,
the orchard in leaf, the pastures high,
the melting snow fills the swelling stream.

Beyond this day when at last it is over,
beyond the lantern, the firework, the flame,
beyond each stone and each carven name,
beyond the lives that will never recover,
we will remember what we have come from.