Canticle For Empire’s Victims
The walls of this church mutter,
and these buildings speak in strident tones
or scream their resentment
like nails being pulled from ancient walls.
These streets whisper the old discontents
of the Currency Lads and Lasses, and the violent,
machinations of the Rum Corps’ unconstrained ways.
The beaches yell their black-skinned warrior chants
over the moist mastications of sunbaking
soon-to-be-swimmers. Warrior blood is in the ground
beneath our feet, and their fears hang
in the air that passes our nostrils.
Victors hand down their story like a Papal Edict,
recited, recited remembered, recalled,
the truth hidden, forgotten, or twisted
like an ancient hand-made rope,
but unchangeable, and as corrupted as wealth itself.
They came to this fatal shore
with unformed dreams and nightmares,
wearing unsuitable, foreign clothes.
They came to reassert life,
to reassure death
that it has a home right here,
and shoot the rebel, blast the resistance,
and turn this great, grand land,
this country that has become so idiotically lucky,
into a garbage tip for their refuse,
a prison camp for their unlucky fools.
Somewhere in Turkey the blood of atonement
is bright under the beach sands.
The novelists write the stories with exacting hands,
and readers read them with credulous eyes.
Somewhere, tonight, tap, tap, tapping
on a computer keyboard,
a journalist writes tomorrow’s news
of the country’s latest fight
for salvation from empire.
Somewhere, tonight, a mother prays
for her boy’s safe return.
And somewhere, four women huddle
in tears, holding their guns
as their home is rocked by bombs.
