One must be realistic : manIs crueller and more violent than
All other living creatures. We
Alone of animals agree
To decimate our species by
Polluting land and sea and sky.
This we must face: the human lot
Is to be capable of garrotte.
To be a creature who guillotines,
Hangs, shoots, tortures; builds a store
Of nuclear weapons; goes to war.
No other animal does this -
Not the hamadryad's kiss
Nor the scorpion's plunging thorn
Match the weapons man has worn.
No cloud of hook-beaked birds of prey
Dismembered Dresden that dark day.
The leopard nor the jaguar
Ripped apart Hiroshima.
No flame-eyed, ravening tiger fell
On Guernica. Man shaped its hell.
Wolf and hyena had no part
In Auschwitz. All was human art.
The world view of a red-eyed bull
Today is quite respectable.
Who are our Great? The school-books pick
Alexander and Frederick;
And, to impress that violence rules,
The cane and strap sing in the schools.
What is honour? a gun-bright guard,
Its files inspected in charade;
A statue in a city square
Of General X slashing the air,
The shadow of arch-violence thrown
Down the ages from the stone.
Mock machine-guns make fine toys
For nicely bought up little boys,
And tailored royals ride the street
Costumed for bloodshed, gloved and neat
Whose image many a church augments
With laid-up flags of regiments.
Each village has its cenotaph
Raised on violence's behalf.
Man is the animal that hates.
What hope for us, for nations, states?
This: only we, who hate like hell,
Only we can love as well.
FROM:- Glas-nos, Cerddi Dros Heddwch/ Poems for Peace. CND Cymru 1987.
LEST WE
FORGET
