Peace and Safety Falling Apart

 Ole Will Yates thought the world was falling apart

back in ’21, it was . . . twentieth century version

after the Big War erupted with an Archduke start:

a royal assassination provoking Kaiser incursion.

But even before that, poet Arnold had feared 

denizens of 19th-century struggle and fight

as industrial might was violently gear’d

for restive armies  clashing by night.

Yet we all know a poet’s just the fool on the hill

crying useless tears for our human condition

And yet we see and we lament them still

as we homo sapiens go cranking our 21st edition.

Back in the day, hitler tried to kill all the Jews

But our guys dismantled his high-tech murders

So the children of Abraham could surely refuse

to be driven like sheep by swastika’d herders.  

Then Rachel, weeping for her children,

came fleeing, eluding that holocaust;

but along came hamas with hisbollah kilndren

to renew ancient grudges of battles long lost.

So what beast that had blown out in a Berlin bunker

while Allies liberated the Brandenburg plaza

could fire up fresh holocaust through a hisbollah junker,

slouching through tunnel trickery to Gaza

And what beast? that had blown out from a D-day bunkered,

could now be slouching toward our Capitol dome

while the chief maga magus of magaworld  hunkered 

in the Offal with dinner while insurrectionists roam?

It has happened before. 1939.

Smoke