Burning Horizons

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.