We who with songs beguile your pilgrimage / And swear that Beauty lives though lilies die, / We Poets of the proud old lineage / Who sing to find your hearts, we know not why ... (James Elroy Flecker)

26.8.25

TV News (Australia)

 

Thousands march 

in our major cities.

(I too, if younger, fitter.)


No mere rumpus,

although impassioned.

Determination!


One placard arrests me:

WAR CRIMES ARE NOT

SELF-DEFENCE. 


Next, an overseas bulletin. 

I recoil, shriek,

cover my eyes. 


Children’s bones 

poke like sticks

through empty skin.




Written for dVerse, for Quadrille #230: Let's kick up a rumpus! (44 words excluding title, which must include the  word 'rumpus'.)


Comments are disabled for this post. (I appreciate that the topic is very hard for any of us to engage with, and I don't wish to start a quarrel here – but sometimes a poet must speak up, as a matter of  honour. You are of course free to use your own poems, on your own blogs, to express yourself on this subject if you feel an urgency to address it.)