Under a roof, in a warm room
a spoon swirls in tea,
Biscuits taken from a packet.
“They’re not like us though are they –
I mean, they think there’ll be, like,
72 virgins and all that …”
This is the settee conversation,
The topic for this morning.
They are watching the news.
“But do you condemn ..?!” the newsreader
is asking a perplexed foreign man.
Meanwhile, under the same sun
A team of exhausted men
Are pulling broken-limbed children
From rubble.
“But they’re not though are they, I mean
When they’re not trying to kill Israelis
They’re just killing each other!”
Meanwhile the same wind,
Which blows around this world,
Hears a woman’s screams
As a child is pulled from a
gaping wound in her belly,
The only painkiller the grip of the
Wrinkled but strong hands
Of weeping grandmothers.
“They’re not like us though are they –
I mean they say all that mad religious stuff
With masks on, waving guns in the air!
I mean how’d you like to live next door
To that!”
And that night, under the same moon,
In some other street
There lies a crumpled old man
In a crumpled suit
In a crumpled town.
There is a bullet in his head,
a crumpled photo in his pocket.
A faded image of another old man,
another grandfather,
His own,
Shot in a street
In another crumpled town
in 1948.
“But they’re not like us …”
“But do you condemn ..?!”
