Monday, 16 August 2021

#593 - all over in Kabul

 


17.viii.21

593

2.228

all over in Kabul

 

more sinned against than

 

their country

and they never gave up

 

traditionally far, so isolated

still trading through

 

as Indo-European as an assault rifle

 

from wildernesses of the narrow heart

from all this brooding while they come

shining with the dusty truth

 

the emirate recommences

 

ask: has a nation ever been built from the outside?

you might think Bosnia or Japan after the war

 

there never was an after-war here

 

they say it’s not Saigon

 

but just as bad an idea

 

can you count the cost?

 

ninety percent of the world’s smack comes from this place

(though the Taliban almost wiped it out once)

before that there was hash with the royal seal

chill space

between empires

now you won’t get a beer

 

this is the grief of

it is what it is

 

I call this world an intervention against the ideal

 

who hasn’t tried a hand here?

it has not been understood

 

crime after crime

remember that fuse lit

with the towers

clever Osama

with all that paradise hate

 

the keys left in the ignition

the guns left on the rack

 

images of another religion

are dust to dust again

 

the locals weren’t much for beer anyway

but the girls got used to going to school

doing sport, voting

doing human

 

out of the maze of mountains

crusades

smart martyrdom

no more deluded in anger than ours

 

say surrender

for a creed

 

300 million dollars a day for twenty years

that’s just what the USA paid

2.261 trillion – that’s what the USA paid

(they lost more contractors than soldiers)

 

and in total

a quarter of a million deaths directly caused by the war

the indirect cost in lives is greater

and

how many more zealots now?

o how much safer is our world?

 

so many bloody arrogant mistakes

of course the victims are as you see

 

hate like a stain griefs never soak up

 

one more bullshit sacred war

say no one died in vain

 

like flies

clinging to the wheel of the aircraft took off

 

history’s so fast –

we must be there again 







https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-47861444

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