They were caught playing football

on the broken street

of Aleppo, one brief glimpse

of normality taken and destroyed,

imagine if it was here, where boys

in rags and girls in tattered

woollen stocking remains were seen

to smile as they played in the brown,

water filled crater where a mortar bomb

had exploded the night before

in the rain of fire; imagine

if that was on the streets of Bootle,

on the blown apart roads

leading to where a school bell once rang

in Leeds, Laverstock, Lincoln or Launton,

would you then feel

the need to shout out no more

or would you still consider someone

a coward for not eradicating

the football and the bomb made

pool off the face of the planet.

Ian D. Hall 2016