The lights did not go out
The walls did not shake and tumble
There were no clarion horns or cymbals
Streets were not awash with blood
But nevertheless blood did run cold.
Promises wrapped in glints of hope
Made screeching sounds as they were broken
And shattered bits of progress
Littered streets and pathways everywhere.
The rumble of the coming doom
Arrived on Humvees made in China
For the use of United Nations troops.
Everybody saw it coming
In vast Tsunamis of dread and fear
But there were simply not enough
Little Dutch Boys in blue hats
To poke their fingers in the dikes
That shuddered as they slid away
And buried ordinary people in the deluge
There was no way to win that war
The Russians tried, so did the French.
You can’t turn oranges into apples
But the women, oh the women
And their pretty little girls
Having had a taste of freedom
In forms that were once denied
They will now be forced by brutes
To give back everything they gained
And become in sad defeat
Merely property of men
swallowed up in flowing burkas
Black as the intentions of their rulers
             ljm