Hijacked
And after all this time, my love
shall we hide from the fireballs
so easily
as so recently
we let the burning cars
blaze outside the pulled-down window blinds?
Has it at last come,
a holocaust out-burning all others,
born of pain, of anger, of revenge?
We've had it too easy
it seems to me
as the bombs rained down on Belgrade,
the tank-drivers scorched black in the turkey-shoot outside Baghdad,
the children dying for want of medicines,
the intifada stone fallen from the hand of the machine-gunned boy
to lie defenceless in the dust of Gaza.
We have marched,
we have carried our banners,
we have formed committees in dusty community centres,
we have written to the press.
And it all avails us nothing
if half our world is dying,
if the training we have given these campaigners
turns, inevitably and justifiably,
upon ourselves.
I salute those passengers who challenged the hijackers
and crashed their plane in fields outside Pittsburgh
harmlessly
to all but their own dying breaths.
Our world has been hijacked.
Will we storm the cockpit
and take the controls
even at risk to our own survival?
Are we that brave?
That foolish?
Is it even yet, not too late?
September 24, 2001
