An Eye For an Eye - Feb 16 2024

 

An Eye For an Eye

Feb 16 2024

In this war

as never before

the horrors escalate;

tit-for-tat,

deterrence and reprisal,

an eye-for-an-eye.

A one-way ratchet

clicking through its stops,

teetering

on catastrophic collapse.

Who started it.

Who went first.

Who had no choice

but to act.

All good questions,

and inconsequential.

Long memories

put the extremists in charge,

and now

we are all swept up

in their fever dreams and grievances.

A pox on both their houses.

Stop the insanity

the world implores

as more blood is spilled.

But no one's listening

and we helplessly look on.

They pray to the same God

preach the same morality.

Both count their dead

and palliate the dying

with the same cold anger,

console the bereaved

with the same futile words.

Are both numb

weary

defiant.

The irony

of our common humanity

when it does no good.

The narcissism of small difference

as Freud once said.

But enough

to kill you neighbour

and feel nothing much.

Because we all need to belong;

kill them

before it's us.