THE BERLIN WALL

Posted by Admin on 7 April 2009, 12:00 am

It stands, its cruel concrete face
a menace to the city it surrounds –
a face with jealous eyes that watch
and wait, alert by day, awake
by night, illuminate to track
and pinpoint escapees.
No Roman wall defying Picts
and Scots: no Chinese barrier
against Mongolian hordes, it stands
a monument to tyranny, to man’s
gross inhumanity – fraught
with memories of bodies left
in bullet-riddled agony,
to perish unattended near
its stark perimeter – dread signs,
each failure bloodily exposed,
of how an autocratic State
denies the right to emigrate.
It stands, a symbol to remind
all men who hope and pray for peace,
when they with Russian leaders treat,
of Barham’s requisite long spoon
for those who with the Devil eat.