Sorry

A poem about looking into the eyes of a girl child while hearing a woman's been shot essentially because she's a woman.


Beautiful new life, little girl, sorry.
In another land our sister was shot
and as you smile my heart is filled with worry
Oh what a world! What a cancerous rot!
As I lay you down in your bed to sleep
From in the dark shadows I'm sure I hear
Men's monstrous laughter seeking to creep
and patriarchal talons drawing near.
Beautiful new life, little girl, sorry.
In another land our sister was shot
And here you begin to write your story
While the world's hate seeks to distort the plot
Beautiful new life, little girl, sorry.
We've been hated since the fall from glory.

I vow to thee, the market

As promised in my previous blog my take on an old hymn:

I vow to thee, the market, to support your bet,
Entire and whole and perfect, the service of your debt;
The debt that asks no question, the debt that fails the test,
That lays upon the altar the dearest and the best;
The debt that’s bound to falter, the debt that pays the price,
The debt that makes unquestioned the final sacrifice.

I heard a country calling, away across the sea,
Across the waste of deficit it calls and calls to me.
The people all are paying for a future full of dread,
And round her land are lying the dying and the dead.
I hear the noise of cut backs, the rhetoric of what’s fair,
I haste to pay taxes, but not all pay their share.

And there's another system, I've heard of long ago,
Most dear to them that seek it, most great to them that know;
We may not rate its credit, we may speak of her King;
Its fortress is not usury, her pride not profiting;
And soul by soul they don’t care if the shining bonds increase,
As its ways are ways of generousness, and all its paths are peace.