“Moving closer to possible U.S. military action, Secretary of State John F. Kerry condemned last week’s apparent poison gas attack in Syria as a ‘moral obscenity.’” (Los Angeles Times, 8/27/13)
What, one wonders, constitutes a moral
Obscenity? It means, I guess, disgust,
Unwillingness to constrain a quarrel
To bitter foes refusing to adjust.
Their venom spills, consuming innocents,
When battle violence becomes obscene
At Jericho, and concentration camps,
In Syria, when nerve gas kills, unseen.
America, empathic, won’t abide
Obscene, immoral slaughter in the East.
Our hearts, exceptional and dignified,
Forget the giant obscenity unleashed
By us on Hiroshima’s citizens
And Nagasaki’s unwarned innocents.
(8/29/13)