The Ashes on our Forehead
The ashes on our forehead
might be last year’s burned palms.
Or wildfires - burned Lytton, LA, Athens.
Or war-blacked cities,
Mariupol, London, Dresden, Hiroshima,
smouldering remains of commerce,
purpose, neighbours, love.
The ashes on our forehead,
horror, memory –
the kilns of Auschwitz,
Phnom Penh’s killing fields,
napalm, charred bones of village,
burning child.
Caught in the sin of the world,
its leg-hold trap,
gnawing our leg,
self-consuming,
burning our home:
making ashes
even of ourselves.
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