Friday 7 April 2017

ANOTHER BRIDGE TOO FAR
















Late March in Westminster.
Spring is here, and with it daffodils,
bright, beautiful and living.
They bloom ignorant
of the newly dead, nearby,
mindless of a vicious edge
that cut a life to death.

Above, the sky is blue, and broad,
and blessing, so it seems, the stretchered,
injured lives below, victims of a vehicle
that battered them so brutally.

Around, the buildings:
Big Ben, Westminster Bridge,
and Mother of all Parliaments,
nurturing and loving, like any mother,
her offspring called Democracy,
so viciously attacked.

Beyond the dead, though,
reaction to an outrage
that destroys its very self:
shock, and shame and grief,
but in the end contempt -
for hatred now, for hatred here
where “Earth has not anything
to show more fair.”

Utter contempt, then, for those parts,
those places where there is no love,
no reaching out, no sharing,
of hands, and minds, and hearts.


for March 22nd 2017


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