Original Sin

Where on God’s earth have they come from,
Did our sinning beget human strife,
People expelled from their homeland,
Exiled to find a new life?

How in the world could this happen,
Bloodlust corrupting the mind,
Is it beyond us to quell it,
This evil pervading mankind?

Brutality prospers through anger
Spawning from parent to child,
They herald the loudest to lead them
Those that they should have reviled.

They talk with such ease of the dying
When thousands of people are lost,
So simple to read out the numbers,
No thought to acknowledge the cost.

Conflict now seems universal,
Peace only won with the sword,
Reaction to carnage more brutal
A price no one sane can afford.

No weapons have turned into ploughshares,
Nor truth found its sway over lies,
By beating each raging protester
They silence the baby who cries.

No one hears as the dawn lifts the daylight
Heed the chorus for peace in the air,
Nor pause though it urges so strongly
Just a moment to sense it is there.

So Judgement must wait in the shadows,
Assessing what needs to be done,
Watching each raising its banner
For victory that never was won.

So where on God’s earth did it come from
The first, the original sin,
Was it our choice to commit it
Or did it pupate from within?

© Clive Harvey