They would grow up grappling with ways of living with what happened. They would try to tell themselves that in terms of geological time it was an insignificant event. Just a blink of the Earth Woman's eye. That Worse Things had happened. That Worse Things kept happening. But they would find no comfort in the thought.

What came for them? Not death. Just the end of living.

I could weep for a river-valley, and I have. But for a country? Oh man, I don't know.

Flat muscled and honey coloured. Sea secrets in his eyes. A silver raindrop in his ear.

Poverty is a crime and the poor are terrorists

Madness slunk in through a chink in History. It only took a moment.

As a writer, I've often said that, among the other things that we need to reclaim, other than the obscene wealth of billionaires, is language. Language has been deployed to mean the exact opposite of what it really means when they talk about democracy or freedom.