Peter Appleton

Lamentation 

The rising seas drove us from our farms as sure

As guns, the swallowing sands, the burning forests,

Storms and tides, everywhere failed crops, climbing prices

Desperate fighting over less than the year before

Each wave carrying away a little till home

Was a waterlogged memory, too heavy to hold

Save in old folks’ ramblings and young men’s disdain.

That we were warned is of no consequence or weight.

Blame the luxury of the distant and strong.

Guilt the pastime of the escaped, the rich and fed.

So this is how we sing our songs in a strange land –

Allusive, longing, fantastical, mouth to mouth,

Call and response in the fields as we work an earth

We won’t or can’t defend, or whispered secretly

At night so that our owners may not hear the words

Of how we learned to speak as children and our hope,

The cruelest master, that one day we may be free.

The politics to which we turned has let us down

False images and gold all made insubstantial

As we betrayed the promises that kept us whole,

Profane as the omniscient spark-dusted smoke eddies

In the dark, cold air above our poor, brave camp fires.

 

Armageddon

All the wars are crawling nearer with their songs

Creeping down their underground corridors

Asking for forgiveness, understanding, selling revenge

As justice, blood as hunger, and freedom as power.

To numb from these atrocities is natural as breath

As broken as water, as stiff as day old bread

protected in the language of action – bold, determined,

Right and all about defense at any cost.

All dreams of determination, all collateral damage

Minimized explained as camouflage and hidden reserves

Not just our enemies oh no but yours as well

We intervene for your progress and safeguarding.

Mutated by munitions, ordered by abstract authority

These faithful are at the end justified by their destruction.

 

Rebellion

Dry thunder cracks the dark, late summer night

To mock sizzling predictions with wild light.

We sit outside and let the cold wind wash

Away the fearful and the weak - they squash

Beneath umbrellas, smart trees grown for shade.

Like refugees from civil wars, they fade

Into the margins while we foolhardy stake

Our cool ignoring warnings. No mistake,

We all are due the deluge when it cracks -

Rank water, blood and shame upon our backs,

No cover in the flashlit running streets,

No safety in the burning struck retreats.

For first we took the rivers and the trees

And then we trashed the mountains and the seas

And now the tempest’s come to call account

Who’s left to speak for us as losses mount?

The wars are being fought in our small names

The floods and droughts the forests lost in flames

The young protest more than a kiss away

The storm has risen on my street today.