The things of which we cannot speak
Make us become we cannot say
The thing brought back from yesterday
That praised the strong and crushed the weak
That thing whose name we cannot name
That fathers fought to keep at bay
The thing we thought had gone away
Now clothes our parliament in shame
Klaus Barbie made their king of spies
Elon von Braun their rocket man
Never more true American
A new Gestapo in disguise
As Gaza’s child lies in the waste-
land made by AngloSaxon bombs
From Mariupol and from Homs
The empire script is cut and paste
Old England sees a child as bad
And Gazan children were the worst
For pious butchery they thirst
In sanctimonious garments clad
We stretch barbed wire around our hearts
We tar the untermensch with lies
O Ichabod! the prophet cries
From you the glory now departs
Cruel and inhuman songs they sang
Again the human turned cyborg
London is come to Nuremberg
And from her ropes shall rulers hang
Justice seems to lag behind
It depends on the law, place and time
For what has happened since the crime
Will sometimes obscure what you find
Some Japanese and German War criminals
Escaped conviction or had sentences that were minimal
It seems politics and influence are important
And stopping Communism and rocket motors were priorities meant
The main point made by the defendants
Was it was victor’s justice in their rant
For without victory they wouldn’t be on trial
And so they were in complete denial
The Japanese Emperor Hirohito survived
Because General McArthur wanted to keep him alive
To build a democratic government
And limit Russian and Chinese expansion meant
Rocket scientists were a premium at War’s end
With the Germans the best in this field of weapons then
So they invented a whole story for Von Braun the scientist
And NASA got the technology for space travel express
I wonder if those people who were murdered
Rest In Peace in justice not rendered
When other priorities wrench out the right
And we go further away from the light.
© Paul Warren Poetry
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