Another Place

There is a place not far from you
where the sky is the same shade of blue
where the sun rises from its eastern place
and where the moon shows the same pale face
where the grass is a similar green
and puddles provide the same dark sheen
where people awake sometime in the morning
and where gunshots are a constant warning
where corpses line every street
and fester and stink in the heat
where mothers cry for their dead
and orphans put themselves to bed
where widows cry themselves to sleep
and the bereaved are left alone to weep
where fathers bleed the soil red
on the same ground on which their sons have bled
where children gasp for some food
and peace is just an interlude
where is this place of such pain?
This horrible land of copper rain?
It is where the sky is the same shade of blue
in a place that is not far from you.

John den Boer, 2000.