Poem: Honourable Men
'I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him...'
The discourse immediately after 9/11 boggled me. 'We are good men therefore every act we contemplate, no matter how bloody, is good'. I am alive; therefore I can shoot myself in the heart and live?
The irony is they all, even the worst of them, *do* mean well. Torture is not done without a noble end; that's what makes the dedicated torturer so frightening.
Honourable Men
I weep hot tears today
For fire in Afghan night
For burned Manhattan streets
For tanks in Saudi sands
Indignant billboards swear
This wrong shall be avenged
We shall achieve our ends
We are no friend of terror
"The fireball is bright
We do not love the flame
The knive is small and cheap
We do not love the knife
"We do not love the the warship
Or flame or knife, or nuclear blast
Or any of our means of war
We think only of peace - "
They are such worthy men
Of wisdom and of peace
Who are indeed my friends
That I am hesitant
To say that still I weep
Hot tears without an end
That Christ not raise the wounded Dow
But dead Afghanistan
