If God was up above and looking down
As I do now upon a land bereft,
The heavens would surely quake in sheer
Revolt, and rain their thunderbolts upon
The human minds that think so ill of others
That they count each heart and home as
Nectar for the unquenched thirsting of
Their guns: the western landscape far below
Sees Aleppo, Homms, Damascus, tortured
In the burning midday sun. While to the East,
Across the desert ridge, the charred remains,
And broken hearts of Mosul, Kirkuk, Baghdad.
Such is the mystery, of history the complicity, as I
Fly on, protected in a flimsy pencil tube
Of western economic arrogance – left to ponder
On the cause of war, and my colluding
Silence. If God were really up above, and looking on
Perhaps a cosmic rage at human arrogance and
Pride would end it all, and dark and cold would
Creep across this spangled space until its galaxies of
Tears spun into nothingness. Better then the
Holy One should choose to make nativity within
This shattered land, and call it home, and reach
With trembling tentacles of love across the ruins of
the cities, and the pain-charred hills, until the
dawning of another day, until the burgeoning
Labour-pains of spring.
High-flying the border between Syria and Iraq, at 37000’
June 2012
