After having been harassed for 10 weeks by my o’seas family members 😉 to upload my holiday photos onto Flickr, I’ve finally started with the first batch on Italy and the first installment on Germany. That kept me away from blogging, but in the meantime my bellissimo friend Jeanie *) emailed this poem, which is remarkable because it was written by the father of one of the victims of the London bombings in 2005. And it is remarkable because it doesn’t join the usual chorus of hatred against ‘the other side’ but instead, as a expression of true humanness and deep connectedness to all life, appeals for forgiveness.
No Room for Hate.
There is no room within my heart
for revenge, fire or hate
there is no room within my mind
for any thoughts like these.
I cannot find the words to say
just how it is I feel
but I know from deepest hurt
I must forgiveness find.
The hurt that’s been done to us
cuts sore like a knife,
but we must not, repay in kind
what has been done to us.
Instead we must try and find
the way that is so hard,
and reach out our loving hands
to find some friendship now.
There can be no more healing thing
than opening wide our eyes
and seeing that most other folk
are really just like us.
David wrote this poem a year after his step daughter was killed in the London Bombings of 2005.
By David Gould
November 2006
melange 