| So many sparrows
fall from the late September sky
one fell in front
of me with a clunk, which made me
think of 9/11
people throwing themselves
out of windows
and the worldwide terror that this
tragedy unleashed,
that day when the whole world,
for a brief moment,
mourned with USA.
Picked up the
sparrow, its chest heaving, seconds
ticking fast, I
had been thinking of old dictators,
are we cruel to
keep them alive? Sitting in small
cells, eating muffins
and thinking of the days when
their words were
the law. Should we give them
a plot of land
to till, to nurse life, not take it?
To rinse bloody
hands in clean soil is also good
for us who have
illegally occupied Iraq - a war -
and let loose the
screaming monster called terror
that will, if we
don’t clean our hands, engulf
the whole world
... but I hear a whisper that says:
“If we use
the ultimate bomb we’ll win the war.”
So many sparrows
fall from sunny September
sky, the one I
held in the palm of my hand is
still, grey beak,
job done and there won’t be
more springs, it
fought no wars, avoided hawks,
lived for the
moment, was not conscious of any
god. Laid the
bird under a bush and walked on.
Jan Oskar Hansen
Copyright © 2004
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