The Sky is Black Today #Poem written after the last atrocity in #Tunisia

Today I post the poem I wrote in Tunisia following the previous atrocity. This beautiful country blending the best of East and West requires massive support from throughout the world. We fail to do so at all our peril… Further posts will describe how we the tourists in hotels such as Marhaba are their gold. They need us, down to the poorest old woman in a far flung village in the Atlas mountains receiving her monthly support from her son the waiter in Marhaba Palace. And we in turn need them if the purveyers of hatred are not to succeed in returning our world to the jungle.

The sky is black today

And blanched – drained grey

Nothing is the same today

Nothing is happy in the land

The nation is at a standstill

The blood of sixty two

Spilt on the steps and floors

Of the Museum

——-

The demons

Of perverted religion

Have leavened their harvest

The people of the nations

From furthest West

To furthest East

Have been sacrificed

Those welcomed

By this educated land

Lie dead and wounded

As murder and cowardice

Merge in the slaughter

Of visitors

——-

They will glory

In their televised trophy

The demonically obsessed

Making out their cowards

To be heroes.

——-

And will these brainless boys

Finally killed

Find their paradise

Of sexually pert virgins?

I think instead

Thier faces will see

The deadened stare

Of Hell’s agony

As they realize

Their absolute affinity

With the grey

Banality of evil

Noosing their remenants

Of soul

Towards eternal emptiness…

——-

And what of

The sweet land

Welcomer of visitors of the world

Breadbasket for the Romans

Providor of senators

For the Empire

And parliamentary voices today

Of compassion

For the lost.

——-

Will we see

Your welcome rejected

Will we see

The visitors of the world

Seek lands they view as safer

For their soujourns

Under warmer skies

And their visits

To the monuments of history?

——-

Or will they realize

Nohere in the world

Is wholly safe

As action and reaction

Richoichet across

A ravished

And tortured humanity?

——-

I will dress

In red today

To bless the blood

Of the people

Of many nations

Killed and wounded

In the museum of Tunis.

——-

I will wear red

Like the geraniums

And lily bushes of

The gardens of Tunisia

Saying no

To a grey future

Celebrating

A renewal of hope

And the denying

Of darkness,cowardice

And stupidity.

——-

I will wear red

To celebrate

The beauty and the sweetness

Of this nation

Which has always welcomed me

And those from

Throughout the world

And fed and educated us

In the lessons of history.

——-

Today

My red shirt

Says I have no doubt

That this welcoming land

Will continue

To bless the

People of the world

With rest and education

And places of safety.

John DW Macdonald 18 March 2015

Tagged: Atrocity, death, Terrorism, Tunis, Tunisia

Posted in: Leadership, Photography, Poetry, Politics, Social Commentary