The Murder Poem by Jan Oskar Hansen

The Murder
Bombs are falling hundreds are killed many of them children
and we shake our heads in dismay, something has to be
done to stop these atrocities.
Yet there is communality about bombing, victims died trying
to save themselves, they did have a chance.
On a sand dune a man on his knees, hands chained behind his
back waiting for his killer to cut his throat and the awfulness
of being human hits me with as a grim knife of sorrow.

And then I have to endure someone defending his murder by
saying it was caused by revenge for our misdeed, I ask, I holler
into the wind, have you no compassion? Can you not feel, just
for a moment, the lonely agony of the man's final moment?
His end so meaningless - as a life is- and no fairytale can make
this revulsion into the defence for psychopaths' entertainment.