NEW GRAVES FOR OLD
    ("Once we had mass graves. Now you have given us these."
    Iraqi Shia woman in Kerbala, interviewed on Chanel 4 News,
                                    February 2004)

Once we had mass graves baked by the sun,
Once we had oil-fields where pipe-lines used to run,
Once there were blue skies with bombers ever near,
Once these were parts of a never-ending fear -
We were the peoples that mourned by mass graves.

Mass graves are gone now, filmed by the Yanks,
Gone from our oil-fields swept over by their tanks,
Gone with their bomb blasts that tore into our heart,
Gone with a regime which rent our hopes apart -
Where are the people that we used to know?

We'll never know who blew our sons away.
How can we keep hoping when killed off every day?

We only know, there's nothing here that's right
Nothing in this wide world, even if we fight.

We'll keep on mourning - till peace returns,
We'll keep on mourning - until the wide world learns,
It wont be happy while its heart's filled with shame,
It wont be happy until its freed from blame:
Blame for these new graves - and us, once again.

                    (Apologies to Terry Gilkyson, Rich Dehr, Frank Miller
                                          - and to Marilyn Middleton-Pollock)