Deaf Song

by Andy Balaam

We who sing these words are not separate from the sins of our people. We stand wearing clothes made by hungry children. We have broken our world and sing ourselves deaf to its moan. We laid our barbed wire across the beaches to stop the broken crawling out of the sea. We climbed inside a bubble to deaden the outsider's voice. We, not someone else, have pulled the walls down on ourselves. Will you have mercy on us? Why would you? If there is mercy, let it be for us to change. If we survive the fire, we want what ember is left to be something of you.