Is it still Aleppo now that it’s flattened into anonymous rubble?

How much more destruction can it take before it is seen to be destroyed?

Horror upon horror dulls the senses until the little children

Covered in grey dust, fighting to breathe become commonplace

To our eternal shame.

This war, the warlords say, will go on – maybe ten years more.

For what? This whole frightening idiocy must be stopped

Before the population comprises grey dusted people,

Limbless, sightless, immobile, buried under giant piles of man-made debris.

What use is Politics when this is the result?

Regimes fight Regimes for control while all around

Their people are dying. Listen to the terrible wailing of the bereaved

Trying to make sense of the indefensible.

And the bombing goes on, and the gassings go on, and the dying goes on

And the lost youth with nothing left to live for

With deadened…