Since I've been a father, the papers read
More bluntly now. The stories not so much
Travellers tales as parables, creeds
From tiny prophets, whose diasporas touch
A western father's silted heart.
This item's aeroplanes of milk powder grounded,
Teddy bears for sick children impounded
by sanctions, hospitals surrounded
by artillery, a weeping man ragged with dispossession
lays a dolls house shroud, beyond intercession,
On unholy ground.
Since I've been a father I understand
Tragedy. It's innocence, that had no sin,
Betrayed. The balloon in the hand
Escapes to the sky, the cables of the wind
Hauling globe to speck to blind blue.
In learning that the living, though loved, can't stay
We become less children every day.
Since I've been Daddy to my daughter,
The bullets flying through the ethnic quarters
Of abandoned apartments, raped by mortars,
No longer seem distant colonial quarrels
But proof that, swollen with medals and morals,
We make dry twigs of our children.