Dec 2014
Those who planned the conflagration
must also have willed the consequences,
the bloody spiral of events,
fully intent on the dread descent
to war, hungry to precipitate
the gangrene that would gnaw at the state
they came lugging cans at day’s end
under cover of curfew, they smashed their way in
taking their time to view at last
that storehouse of learning; they laughed
as they pissed on the catalogue index
and shat on the checkout desk
generous with fuel, they worked through the lists
ethics, biography, the works of poets and artists,
the newspaper reading room where each press story
cried out to become the making of history
and another room they found unlocked
so easy, so easy, the children’s books
according to plan, each ground floor sala
attentively treated, they checked and gathered,
waiting for the signal. Now. Hate
is hurled, a thrust to the heart
with the precision of training – job done,
and no paperwork needed for this one
a beautiful beast erupts through the stacks
rears shrieking, where dictionaries crackle
and die, language recoils in shame,
unique ola parchments perish in the flames
pages cry out, and black flocks of words
flee the madness, clamouring skywards
across the shuttered town eyes turn
to the rising omen: something big burns
smoke builds a hammer overhead
fear glimmers in glances – nothing to be said
as smoke becomes night but wonder and pray
at the losses to be tallied next day
wounded morning will fall soon enough here
and show how small birds can be startled from cover,
will fall like black feathers stripped and dropped
from the craw of night, like dismembered hope.
As if in remembrance of Alexandria
fork tailed black kites abound here
the flanking bastions of the old Dutch Fort
occupy the shoreline; at their foot
refuse accumulates, the detritus of life
putrid, filthy, an abandoned tide line
now animated by the stiffening breeze
that rises from the shallow northern sea
nearby, neglect, too, clutters the walls
of the uncomprehending Town Hall
business, recalcitrant as usual, within
while dead stars drift as dirt in the wind
some, breeze-driven, will penetrate –
these desks, these files will yet feel the weight
pinned in between, yesterday’s pride
lies disarrayed, disabled, open to the sky
walls streaming with the black blood of books
eyes put out, cupola holed, howling, shocked
each smouldering ember an agony fanned
to its necessary end by a welcome wind
the depths have been breached, Goya’s monsters unbound
the songs of mere innnocence are drowned
in a roar, and more, ignorance proves its cost –
they are to blame, always, the self styled bosses
who would harness maneaters to remake the age
out of shadows in their own brutal image