Phoenix

Phoenix

Smoke still coils in the cooling autumn air,
people grope amongst the ruins, hopelessly,
probing down, where secret fires still smoulder.
Each day, now, echoes with the rattling of sabres
and men, clutching to their hearts a secret joy
parrot the ancient rhetoric of revenge.

Where are we now? What burning city?
Nagasaki or New York? Troy or Dresden?
No matter. Misery has no nationality,
the limpid eloquence of tears no language:
and though voices chorus that the world is changed,
what has risen from the rubble is nothing new.