April 2026 - Vol. 23, Issue 2

Bombed apartments lie open,

windows shattered, spears of

jagged glass, broken teeth

biting into vacancy.

Torn net curtains flap,

wave, signalling into emptiness.

No neighbours to spy on

No secrets to conceal.

In flattened playgrounds

twisted slides, slaughtered serpents,

still emblazoned in blue and yellow.

Swings sway in the freezing wind;

the haunting cry is heard

of dead children’s voices.

In ruined shopping malls

corpses clutch in frozen fingers,

plastic bags of untouched bread.

Cratered roads leave villages

names on maps, virtual destinations,

no more reachable than

Shangri-La or Camelot.

Stray dogs ravage the dead

Loose horses graze

in someone’s garden.

In a bombed-out cottage

an old woman cooks potatoes.

Behind her, two flower-papered walls,

half a cupboard, a china elephant,

the remnants of her bedroom, shown

on the evening news in Paris, New York, Delhi.

The village classroom,

a tangled mess of broken desks,

a single shoe, an open book,

a child’s sketch of a burning tank.

A boy crossing a pock-marked road,

automatically looks for traffic.

A ghostly line of phantom waggons

passes the unburied dead.

Stuck in muddy ditches, tank guns

point skywards at the rising moon.

A bomb explodes, a flash of red,

the dreadful beauty of instant flames.

In London, Washington, Moscow, Beijing,

they roll the dice, again .  .  .