Pax Americana

Now pours the sewage in the Basra street
And cholera takes up her wasting reign.
The Tigris and Euphrates are defiled
While on the earth pours radioactive rain.

Now lies the treasure house of history
Raped, ransacked, pillaged, looted, and laid bare.
Now grieve the parents of the infant scorched.
Now weep the widows, hostage to despair.

Now bullets ring out on the city streets.
Disease and hunger breed with enmity,
And cluster bombs, beneath unwary feet,
Perpetuate boring atrocity.

Now journalists of independent voice
Their unheard protests sicken and decay
Whose predecessors, for exposing lies
The U.S. told, with murdered lives did pay.

Now slaughtered innocence by blood decries
The impious promise of imperial might.
Reborn repression reaps the Fourth Reich's rule
And petty criminals are shot on sight.

Yet must Iraq its new-made Führer praise,
Embrace its conqueror and desolation,
Declare in unison with happy heart
"Thank you, Herr Bush, for bringing liberation."

May 2003