The Flood

 You were born after the flood.

You have never smelled the blood

nor heard a mother’s anguished cries

nor watched the river waters rise

as blackened bodies, floating by,

were fished out, gasped at, recognised.

You would not understand that pain.

You were born after the rain.

You have only sort of felt

secondhand the hand that’s dealt

to foreign folks who baked your bread,

who washed your cars and now lie dead

unspooled on slimy river banks

or chewed up in the treads of tanks;

whose children in a flour sack

will not survive the next attack.

But history has its eyes on you.

You’ll pay the toll though you crept through

enjoying Europe’s postwar peace

not caring that this interstice

was momentary, fragile, new.

You just did what consumers do:

you just consumed and loafed and played.

But now the piper must be paid.

Your daughters will be raped and die

their babies pitched into a fire

then, undeterred, your splendid sons

will pledge revenge, acquire guns,

will tear down cities, kill and laugh;

they’ll crack the pretty world in half

until they meet their ounce of lead

and fall among the shameless dead,

and then their blank and hollow eyes

will gaze for days in dumb surprise

that this is what became of them -

these smart, sharp-handed sons of men - 

that this is all that they were for -

the mud-mouthed, busted toys of war.

You know it’s true. You smell the blood.

Your kids are bracing for a flood.