But then I think, no! This can’t be so, how can life be so cruel?

But then I think, we have so little power but so much comprehension, so maybe that’s it;

Comprehend but do nothing.

This is Grenfell Tower, so much comprehension, so much understanding, so little power.

The unpacking begins. The explorations wander through mazes. We catalogue, we classify, we empathise, we explicate, we condemn, but do nothing.

The act of describing is enough. Enough is enough.

Is enough.

And as the days roll by, more explications roll by.

The tests. I laugh!

The tests a sham.

The tests begin – again.

Then bizarrely music fills my brain. Somehow, the music explains.

I hear chords, they strike a chord.

The corpses, they pile up in a strange land. Corpses are the same everywhere. And not surprisingly, the Grenfell corpses are identical to Aleppo corpses, as are Mosul corpses, are the same as the…I can’t go on.

This has to stop!

But then I think, this can’t be so.

But it is.

That woman, blonde she was, well coiffed she was. Beautiful nails, she spoke and out came shit, nothing but empty shit, and so well coiffed, but shit just the same.

How can this be so? So much is known, so little acted on.

They explicate, they analyse, they categorise, they bury us with little truths, piled up like corpses in a stairwell, each one a truth, each truth a little death.

Lots of little deaths don’t make one big death.

Perhaps the causes somehow change the end. The end becomes the beginning and in doing becomes the end.

They bury us with little truths

The truths pile up like corpses

Each corpse a truth, each truth a lie

Each lie a death

Each death a life.

St. Thomas’s Hospital, 22 July 2017

This poem was originally published by Investigating Imperialism.

Featured image from 21st Century Wire