I Hear the Cries by Jennie Hart

Fragments of Second World War Bomber - RAF Cosford

  I hear the cries of the children

Of the babies and the women

I am not there

But I watch their weeping

Their sobbing and despair

 

Frightened faces, anguished voices

I see and hear them on my screen

The horror and the pain

No longer hidden

As in other wars,

In plain sight, all is seen

 

Where are the hostages

Are they alive?

Do they survive?

Are they in a hole in the ground?

Or in some god-forsaken tunnel

Never to be found?

 

The rabbi preaches from the synagogue

The muezzin calls from the mosque

Does their God know they cannot find their way?

That they are lost?

 

Christians say ‘Thou shall not kill’

And ‘Love thy neighbour as thyself’

Do the war-makers read these commandments?

Or are they in a file

Or a folder

Stacked on a digital shelf?

 

Is it one God guiding these holy tribes?

Are Allah and Yaweh the same?

Does each God say strive for justice

Fight to the death

In your own God’s name?

 

I hear those tortured cries

As I lie in my bed

Or when I wake at dawn

Hear that sorrow in my head

 

Never mind the history

This fight for land

Should the country be fairly shared?

What does their God command?