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| Dresden. Late February, 1945 |
On the 14th February 1945, the German city of Dresden was engulfed in a firestorm as the British and US Air Forces dropped thousands of high explosive bombs and incendiary devices over the city. Over 25,000 people - mostly civilians - were incinerated.
This original piece offers a poetic reflection on the moral obscenity of aerial warfare as it has been exercised from the attack on Dresden in February 1945 to the sacking of Baghdad in March 2003.
Production Notes
Music: Nico Di Stefano
Voice: Vincent Di Stefano
Burning Horizons can be streamed using the media player above. A CD quality mp3 file is available for download here.
The Poem
Burning Horizons
What was it like when Dresden was sleeping
When the sky shrieked metal then crashed all around
When the town was a furnace, a fiery hell-world
For mothers and children now under the
ground?
And what was it like that big sky morning
When Little Boy cried then howled down the day
The flashing of atoms, the tempest of terror
The unknowing mothers all gone away?
First in Kabul and then on the Tigris
Silicon soldiers tore open the night
And wounded yet further a people near broken
And brought further darkness in fulminant light.
The hatred now stored in the cones of the missiles
Will rage and release in ruin and woe
And the heart of the night pierced again with fierce metal
The blood and the water continue to flow.
I wait for the turn of a cheek that was promised
I wait for the love of a world now in woe
I wait for the call of a sorrowing mother
For terror on Terra
can nowhere go.
