Warflames (1)
Humanity must perforce prey on itself,
Like monsters of the deep*.
Once again, old scars have festered
Into new wounds. Snakes half scorched
Are hissing like lethal drones in sleepless nights
Resurgent madness contains the streets
Warflames in the Middle East
Warflames in the Black Sea basin
Lethal rockets in the evening sky like
Christmas fireworks of careless children
Towers tumble like hapless matchboxes
Sane streets twist into a metal mesh
Beneath the rubble which now rules the roads,
Aloud, the inaudible screams of
The dead, the living-dead
Whose living rooms have suddenly
Turned into fiery graves; countless babies
Whose corpses coil like question marks
Between the benighted pages
Of crushing concrete slabs. Whole cities
Pummeled into toxic powder: this glittering
Race back to medieval darkness
Those who roast in this blaze are just
A fatal fraction of a world undone by its heat
From the Black Sea to the Mediterranean
Fishes fry in broiling waters
Humanity must perforce prey on itself,
Like monsters of the deep*.
“The extraordinary majesty of our ordinance!”
Exclaims a tv news anchor, his eyes aglow
With patriotic fervour. ”Our men will do it in no time
And be back here in the shortest order”
A truly majestic night it was
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With the awe in the ordinance wreaking hell
Under another sky: wasted cities, damaged dreams
The widowing, orphaning majesty of
Blind bombs and their blinder makers
Arrogant arogunyo* for whom
Bloody war is video game
Whose endless thirst is watered
By tears from foreign fronts
The armoury is full
The rockets are rocking
The banks overflow with crimson profit
Endless cycles of senseless wars
Of partial peace-brokers
With broken Truth between their teeth
Striving to douse little fires with bigger ones
They nail Justice to the Cross
Then wonder why Violence never leaves their doorsteps
They who only bow in the Temple of Power
To the cannibal majesty of Supreme Awedinance
* William Shakespeare King Lear, Act 4, Scene 2.
** War monger
(Continued next week)