The Nazis and Us

Lest we forget the hands and eyes

That plundered lives -

Those Fascist hands and eyes

That freely plucked the lives

In a formal casual administrated abomination

Churlish in decadence and carelessness

With the hats and badges and nothing else fathomable.

Lest we forget:  This hand and eye

Writes and reads - 

This free hand and stern eye

That recalls and tells

How the formal administration casually served up

With relish, a hope of a final solution

A universal death in neat typewritten lists.

Lest we forget this hand and eye

That might turn upon us all -

This hand to twist and eye to glaze

Turned to the Fascist way

Grim reaping and treading through the living world

Closed and charging with blackened might

Pushing death to succeed with a blazing distorted right.

Lest we forget the hands and eyes

That are blown away -

Those child’s hands and eyes

Blasted and plucked

In the blind indifference of the rocket blast

Sent by the boiling blood of a Fascist heart

Against the boiling blood of Fascist hearts.

Lest we forget our hands and eyes

That are led and fed by Grace -

These our own hands and eyes

Treasuring all lives

Those we cannot see linked small and large

In families wrapped precious along the land

In our world of life where we are taught to be free.

Colin Morgan

FOCUS

That tune in my head again - “Golliwogg's Cake-walk”.

Marching men and machines to the horizon.

Beams of sunlight flicker off the brass.

Dour politicians, inflated by loathing, drink-in their might - their generous expense.

Shrinking...

Turning down a side street,

Where cafés, ranged empty like theatres in mourning, await -

Their lone monochrome waiters humming, tapping feet.

Eyes follow me as I am quietly detained.

Collapsing in again...

Looking across my cell: Six feet.

A chink of tortured light arrives from nowhere.

Same year, same concrete.

Same Nile Delta stain weeping down the ghost-graffitied wall.

Colin Morgan  

AND THEN NO MORE

It is not that there was a sudden rush of wind,

A change in the breeze,

A breath.

Like a Pharaoh’s mouth

The gape was silent,

There was no expectation,

No beckoning;

A black hole

with the desert sand a film on the parched lips.

It is not that there was a light of joy,

A glint of promise,

A spark.

Like a Pharaoh’s eyes

The gaze was hollow,

There was nothing to see,

No welcoming;

The sockets shells

beneath a bandage of filth across the brow.

It is not that there was a sea of fragrance,

A waft of sweetness,

A scent.

Like a Pharaoh’s skin

The aroma was dust,

There was no tang,

Mere dry brittleness;

No taste but a soft bitterness

from the rasping snake’s skin shed three millennia ago.

It is not that there was a burst of song or wailing,

A cry in the dark,

A whimper.

Like a Pharaoh’s larynx

The cords were petrified,

There was no timbre,

No sound but oppression;

The ear felt no disturbance

from the silence trickling long in the tomb.

But there was an imperative,

A need to provide,  

To insist.

Like a Pharaoh’s life

Great power surged forth,

The piling of stone on stone,

A great monument rising;

Much adoration and dreaming

and a deep born incestuous love that lingers still.

Colin Morgan