In monochrome greys, blacks,
whites of horror,
Picasso dismembered the war logic
with brush on canvas:
fragmentation, grotesque, the bull unmoved,
the horse screaming,
a mother grasping her dead child, forlorn,
a severed arm still gripping a broken sword,
a single lightbulb burning like a
bare, all-seeing eye
gazing with history’s judgement
over the wreckage
of Basque lives dismantled by
German bombs on a market day,
as the sands move from here
with the insistent winds.

That was 1937, and now is now.
The same course sands blow through Gaza,
through Kharkiv,
through every cratered village (old and new)
where the powerful bring their
newest fire (with hate)
on the self-same targets:
the ordinary, the ordinary, the ordinary.

The winds still move the same way,
catching the hot breath of emperors,
generals, presidents,
shifting sands across continents,
as friction, erasure, coverage,
disguising these precious men (Yes, men!)
who have never cradled a dying child,
never heard the screams before impending death,
as history’s long canvas stretches out and out,
grey upon grey upon grey,
sands moving across it, folding it with the winds,
each panel a Guernica reincarnation,
each age a dark renewal, unblessed,
the mother always screaming,
the sword always broken,
the light that was blind but now witnesses
the truth: for I see, we see,
that Guernica is not locked in a museum,
not trapped in Spanish history-
it is present, it is here.

 

22/4/2026