Complicities

While some,
perched like crows on carrion,
peck at corpses, the rest look on,
complicit in the deceit, seeing nothing,
bearing no witness, hearing nothing,
never speaking out.

Some,
like crows on carrion
devour the eyes first, for blindness,
pluck out tongues to feed the silence
while their own squabbling hunger
deafens everything else that’s left.

Hands are wrung,
held over eyes and ears and mouth,
while some go on,
breaking fingers so none can point,
stealing the breath so none can testify,
bruising the lips so that compassion is nothing
but a drool of sorrow.

See none… hear none… speak none…

… some of us,
whose thoughts refuse to dwell on evil,
condemn us all to live amongst it.

© BH, 2024

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A number of things passed through my mind, these divided days. ‘Birds in the wilderness’ was one of them. A scout song by all accounts, about waiting to eat. But I had ‘crows in the wilderness’ instead. Then came notions of predation, and scavenging - cleaning up in the aftermath.

That got me to the three wise(?) monkeys. Whether hear no, see, no speak no was an injunction to promote goodness in deed and thought or, as I found elsewhere, one that banished such thought and deed so as not to be tainted by them.

In the end, I think I veered toward ‘for evil to triumph, the good need only do nothing’. That’s my rendering of the words Edmund Burke didn’t write and which John Stuart Mill kind of did.