One Comment

1. thepoetryman
   Posted 30 Dec ’06 at 14:41 | Permalink

   Rats are weeping in the gutters
   Between the two rivers. The bone-dry air is motionless
   And the water is muted, lifeless. Mesopotamia is
   Going round the bend, teetering on the edge.
   Citizens of this great land, caked with blood,
   Walk, stunned and weeping while a shadow looms
   Behind an enormous object whose jaws rumble.

   Was it worth your capture? Your death sentence?
   You’ve carried out torture, murder, rape and genocide,
   Now there is a larger thing haunting your land and people.
   That enormous thing’s been sent as your executioner,
   But it is not God. No. It is not Allah. It is empire.
   And its sunburned grief of crippled beasts
   Shall haunt you for eternity.

   In the world you leave, men are still filled with hate
   And horror beyond the quaking gates, summoning murder,
   Clambering across the wilderness, devouring children.
   Empire, has not, nor will it ever warble an angel’s song
   Or sing out in a reverent verse for mankind!
   It shall echo its high-pitched droning of “odium”
   While the rats fill their lungs with tears.