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Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts
Jack Lindsay: Who Will Dare Look This Child in the Eyes?
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Jack Lindsay
The Scared Men (1950)
The faces change,
the faces are still the same.
You pass in the street today
the men who crucified Christ,
the man who thrust your brother
into the Auschwitz-flame,
the same one or another
who plays the ravening game
with all things bought and sold,
all murderously priced.
They are afraid,
these men of the ruthless hour,
who will wreck the world with a grin
rather than slacken their hold.
The atom-bomb that they nurse
is their greed in its ultimate flower:
their rule is wholly a curse,
destruction their only power,
World-end the last toss of their coin
for an earth that is bought and sold.
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