Forty Nine

Forty Nine

.

Forty nine young souls massacred

Children slaughtered, bound, throats cut

Died in terror with a bullet to the head.

Comfortably we sit and condemn the horror

Syria a despot state in its own death throws?

Or a tyrannous state with a cyanide grip on its people?

After Belsen did we not say ‘never again’?

But still the lynch men came, rabid dogs sent

by their masters to wreak havoc on the innocent

After Pol Pot’s killing fields did we not say ‘this must stop’?

But Bashar al-Assad in Damascus sits crimson covered

A victim of a conspiracy he claims

while the Alawite murder under the protection of his shells

.

Yet we sit comfortably sick at our ineptitude

Paralysed by the financiers and fanatics

Who continue to play Assad’s deadly game of chess.

We may wave our placards and our leaders rattle their sabers

For a while at least, and the world will feel better about itself

But the money in our pockets and a change in the weather

will erode our fervour and dull our sensitivities.

Such is our byte sized fed world that these children will be

forgotten and lost in a countless lists of growing atrocities

In forty nine days will we remember this brutality?

In forty nine days will we even care?

By Dibs