The Mask

The Mask

Trapped faces turn, their eyes stare out at you:

“Why me, when I have nothing?” and you turn

Hurt by these images of pain, turn off

The TV, turn to trace unspoken words

Across an empty page.     This is the lie.

Between the phosphor mask and starving minds

How many unknown interests bleed the truth

Away from heat and cold, from flood and drought?

How many costly weathers of demand

Will rot and stain the colours of their loss.

These need a fire and break their homes for wood –

A soldier prays as metal breaks to flame;

These meet and cry – tears catch the light like knives;

These lay an empty body in a grave –

And blame is buried underfoot.     I know.

I cut these shots that show you half the world.

I cut this gem of knowledge that you claim

Of foreign pain and grief. I know the lies

Half-lies and truths I hold, withhold, and turn

To set before you, catching hearts and light.

Oh, such humanity! To care, yet trade

A real world for mere images, for we

Have filtered life through iron, oil and stone

And cast its shadows from our empty hands

On brightly coloured screens.     That’s all you see.

In each new year these plant a ring of stones,

Because you profit from the growth; each year

These say goodbye because then your returns

Look good; each year these burn their shreds of love

Because you’re proud to say: “All this is mine.”

In black, you write and offer them a pyre

Of paper flames that buy a little time

Before you parch their land with debt and flood

Their streets with hatred. Words, unspoken, stain

The colour of your charity blood-red:

A lie.     Your empty gestures, coin by coin,

Have closed your eyes and made the mask that rots

Your heart and spine and breaks your starved mind free

Of truth. You are to blame that now and here

And half a world away they ask “Why me?”

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