Who stood at Kosovo Polje? Who heard the guns at Waterloo? who remembers those days today, to bear the rancour this day too? The time we were meant to forget, the writer's pen traps it in ink. We read much but we do not think, and contrived hatred we beget. None lives who saw the mad work done. But mention an imagined past, None hesitate to pick a gun And swear to defend to the last. The last who remember are dead We rush to take their place instead. Published in Remember , ed. Paragram; Four Point Press, Shepperton, 2014. ISBN: 978-0-9927123-2-7.
The message is supreme;
Born in the heart,
and lilting itself
from tongue to tongue,
throwing its scent
over wind and wave;
travelling on dots
or fingers
when blindness
or silence bar its way.
It hews itself into stone
or burns itself onto magnetic discs;
it is the message that lives
and I exist
solely to pass it on.