A Light Unto The Nations

 

In the annals of human lore there are

unique and rare stories whose ancient

origins are located in the mists of time

and this is one of them. This is a story

of humankind whose iteration is endless

one for which there is surely a genesis but

just as surely no limit. It endures in all its

manifestations with no sign of flagging

as it makes its way into the future. It is

not a fable, not a myth, not a folk story

but a repeatable occurrence that no

measurable calamity is capable of stemming

for the cause and the reaction stirs itself to

life without end. It is not exactly a story

of unrequited love, nor is it a story of

human compassion overcoming adversity.

This story is, by any measure, one of

ghastly horrors, of a mass rejection of

the presence of a people upon whom is

visited, era following era, catastrophic

enmity and annihilation. It is a people

among whom the seed of genius has been

generously endowed yet whose purported

character is unfailingly held in contempt.

It is a people for whom hope and a future

is denied but they themselves cling fast.

 

Beware The Urban Forest

 

They are sagacious creatures, bold and

masters of strategy as befits those of

the animal kingdom's predators. Much

after all, depends on their practised

hunting habits, for in their ancestral

habitat they maintain a balance in the

presence of creatures they stalk. They

are also particularly adaptable, since

their once-wild geography was invaded

and with little interest in seeking refuge

from interlopers they have become

extremely skilled at slinking about 

the background making full use of the

same green spaces so valued by other

animal species including man. Human

habitation in close proximity to those

natural places where they can den and

procreate is of little account for they

are also adept at scavenging albeit not

preferentially. Their appearance is

similar to that of the dogs that people

walk in natural settings, oblivious to

the presence of untamed canids though

the dogs detect their presence alerting

themselves that long-distance cousins

are about, seldom imagining themselves

prey. Silently lurk the coyotes, awaiting

opportunities; one offering the prospect

of play-time friendly dogs are eager to

indulge in, unaware that others unseen

follow behind fully prepared for group action.

 

 

National Dilemmas

 

  Photograph: Sombo Sombo/Alamy

In poverty-stricken countries of the world

 
which we may no longer refer to as Third World 

 
countries but rather make full use of the 

 
euphemism 'emerging economies', there is one

 
inexhaustible natural resource the envy of

 
First World economic nations; the growth

 
steady and reliable, of their populations where 

 
the natural increase grows and grows despite

 
privation, food scarcity, joblessness and lack 

 
of medical care and the unfortunate loss of life 

 
accompanying those lacks. In those countries 

 
governed either by incompetents or a hierarchy 

 
of privileged elites for whom nothing of concrete

 
value lacks, the great unwashed for whom 

 
sanitation, potable water, basic foodstuffs, power

 
and health care remain beyond imagination it's 

 
live or perish as fortune rolls her die, and  hope 

 
is lost. Yet wealthy nations grapple with their

 
confounding statistics that emphasize population

 
replacement expectations remain mysteriously 

 
misplaced for as the aged die, fewer are born to 

 
replace them. This, even as administrations enact

 
legislation and expend treasury to enhance

 
the prospect of child-bearing, offering measures

 
inconceivable to those others, even while

 
residents of wealthy nations sneer at their

 
subsidies, the child care provisions, the health

 
care, the paid parental leave, as insufficient

 
in depth and quantity as a persuasive gambit.

 

 

Oh Unhappy Fate

 

What's a prince of the House of Windsor

to do when his grandma was so mean to him?

The covenant as he knows it, is shattered

and it is nought to do with him. Bred in

his purple blood he knows his royal

prerogatives. Where now can he turn

betrayed by all but those entranced by

his free-wheeling celebrity? To that manner

born was he, inherited from the mum whose

absence he mourns. A thespian he, with a

penchant for costumery and Tomfoolery

for whom the forbidden held an estimable

attraction as he raged against conformity

and basked in the glare of publicity gaining

admiration from rank commoners' penchant

in aversion from social niceties. Suffering

the ultimate pathology of love and hate in

his dodgy connection with a public passion

for royal disgraces he has, like another

sought to right royally bring discomfort

to the royal family. Yet he has matured, the

impish non-conformist become a family

man, discovering a persona so alike that

of the mum he lost; addicted to attention

serene in her ego, tempting the paparazzo

while railing against loss of privacy, poor

soul. How traumatic to finally discover that

though entitled, he does not make the rules

to do as he wishes while retaining titles and

 public largesse. So what then is a prince to do

downgraded to junior Duke and Duchess?

 

 

Exhibitionism's Grandeur

 

 

This child whose face is perpetually grimed

 

in a paroxysm of rage will never win a beauty

 

contest nor be credited with a sweet demeanor

 

but she has become immensely popular as one

 

with an aggrieved message to deliver in a

 

manner quite congruent with her pathology on

 

the autism spectrum of oppositional defiant

 

disorder, despising authority so redolent of

 

adolescent juveniles' resentment of adults'

 

positioning themselves as authoritarian in the

 

belief they have the right to regulate children's

 

behaviour. Children invest much in their gleeful

 

assertions that it is adults with their lack of vision

 
who have disrupted nature's unblemished accounts.

 
What a different world we now inhabit than might 

 
have been imagined a half-century ago when 

 
parents felt assured of the sex revelation of

 
their offspring at birth, to the very present 

 
when what you see is not necessarily what you

 
believe with gender dysphoria representing yet

 
another life-disruptive issue in the social order

 
pitting progressive authority against the mere

 
status of parenthood. Long years past people

 
were aware of quaintly rare anomalies such as 

 
hermaphroditism and homosexuality and the

 
attraction to transvestism as an entertaining

 
novelty, before an entire championship and

 
celebrated industry arose embracing the 

 
new reality of errant humanity's fascination

 
with the dazzling display of nature's occasional 

 
deviation from the boring irrelevant ordinary.

 

 

Arming The Faithful

 

In a world obsessed with the wonders

of high tech, give some thought to the

preoccupation of Islam's ventures in faith

introducing to the world the advances

that can be made in asymmetrical

warfare with the use of low-tech and

no-tech, simply ingeniously using tools

at hand beginning with tasking the devout

to prove the strength of their faith in jihad

with the ultimate sacrifice exalted in

the noble robes of martyrdom and heroism

to which end suicide vests become the

explosive devices of first choice followed

in haste by the simple medium of

improvised explosive devices as an

example, and for truly maximum impact

in the efficacy of holy wars astutely

diverting passenger jets as missiles

aiming to strike symbolic high-rise 

edifices housing thousands of those

unpliant non-believers as their just due

for insulting the Prophet. And during times

of high tension confronted by powerful

states whose enmity augers conventional

warfare their armaments well equipped

to extinguish the ambitions of conquest

full use of deadly missiles in planned

mass slaughter to send the world into

disbelief at the commission of war crimes

yet not seen as such by the perpetrators who

profess no responsibility for the carnage

and cast blame on those surreptitiously

assaulted by proxy militias on order

from none other than the sacred scripts

of a holy spirit whose disciples are legion.

 

 

Silently

 

Silently, cresting the blue bowl
of the sky, the snow goose
spreads wide its wings
loftily gliding in its
mundane ecstasy of flight
this mid-November day.

Well below, sturdy masts
of gnarled old pines stir in the
prevailing, insistent wind.
In the depths of the woods
stir creatures of the wild.

An owl, unperturbed or
deliberately unmindful of
anguished, irate shrieks of hawks
the racketing of mobbing crows.
He roosts, in a tree crook
master of surveillance
to swoop when he cares to
upon un-vigilant mice, hare,
voles and birds not of his
distinguished feather.

Oblivious to the riotous drama
woodpeckers clank lustily
on trunks of spruce, pine, fir.
The lunatic peal of the Pileated
rents the atmosphere.

Signalling arrival of dark
scudding clouds obliterating
the wavering, late-afternoon
sun. Soon, ice pellets strike
against the landscape.
The chattering of nuthatches
chickadees, waver, then still.

The lion of winter testing his
imminent arras. The season resists
damping winter's ardour. Sleet
turned to innocuous rain
thrilling the primeval moulds
mosses, lichens and ferns.

Look, there - on the forest floor
a body, swiftly decaying.
Its red breast and sadly
dishevelled feathers a mass
of compost to enrich the
leaf-dense, richly damp earth.
Tardy migration has its price.