More Tuaregs will surely die
Today, tomorrow;
Hollow cattle shudder out of life
Like paper
Scorching, crackling in a flame.
There is a silence.
The rain in Spain, poor Spain,
Falls mainly on the plain.
Once
They used to sing.
Split plains, parched grains, nothing
Shows, grows above the red dust
That blows along despair.
There is a silence.
America, the promised land,
Whose wheatfields lie in marbled chunks,
Hunks of adamantine clay
As dry as bone, as pitiful.
There is a silence.
England’s green and pleasant land
Is thin and fearful,
Yellowed, sear;
Roots will wither, love will die,
Greed stalk through a tearless sky;
There is a silence.
Weep, weep, grey clouds,
Weep here, weep now.
Guatamala, Bangladesh, Afghanistan.
You sicken them;
Too blind with tears of pity
For their hopeless, helpless poverty
You drown them in your love.
In hate drown us.
Drown us that we, grown desperate now,
May with the joy, the wonder of each green, uncurling leaf,
Rain-blessed, grow, too,
In love.
May it rain;
Oh God, may it rain.
(undated 1977?)
