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City of the Bee: 22 May 2017, 9:31 pm

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No retreat, No surrender - easy to say, harder to remember,

But we do: in these smoky terraces, which are my home town,

People from across the world

Now share my home:

Huguenots and Flemish weavers remembered in the names of pubs.

The Irish fleeing famine: the O'Donnells and O'Neills on the rub

Ashkenazi Jews escaping the Czarist pogroms: the Cohens and Rabinowitz.

 Afro-Carribeans, the Patels from India and Pakistan,

Hindus and Chinese restaurants: Chinatown, the curry mile

People's History Museum:Manchester Jewish Museum

Yoga and temples, meditation and dharma,

The open Gurdwaras

Sikhs who welcome all.

 

But now we're faced with a black, black wall

The world has brought us

The nuts and bolts of terror:

The slaughter of the innocents

An overwhelming feeling of fear and anxiety.

Manchester remains: a Standard Bearer

Of tolerance and respect

While others seek protection from this miasama - this new black death -

By curtailing liberty, free speech:

 

There will be no war of each against each..

 

These smoky terraces have leached away so-many broken hearts:

Hearts broken by the mud of Passchendaele, the sands of the Western Desert

Jihadi - heaven is just a fucking decoy,

A lie bought by the broken bodies of girls and boys,

This blackest lie of the blackest of arts

Has no part in the heart of these smoky terraces. 

◄ L'Afrique

Dreamtime ►

Comments

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John Marks

Fri 22nd Mar 2019 21:05

Thanks for your interest and support Phil and Mark. John

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M.C. Newberry

Fri 22nd Mar 2019 15:15

Sadly, the slaughter of the innocents has its predecessors….not least
just across the Irish Sea - as well as nearer to home for those of us
old enough to have been through the not-so-distant times. It can
sometimes seem like a generational punishment from "the gods"
that such things keep occurring.
These small islands have received many
different kinds from many varied origins and
the overwhelming solution has been a
desire to "join in", not create parallel lives.
The word "alienate" is so easily altered to
"alien hate"!

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Various

Fri 22nd Mar 2019 01:40

A fair assessment of the bile we are trapped in. Tinged with love and care.

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