Choice

Hatred’s well invested.  The capital

grows year by year.  Love

lies in the current account.  We spend it piecemeal.

We love more easily (mostly) than we hate

people we know.  We hate in bulk

—Communism, Islam (those Ayatollahs,

those reds.  Once it was Nazism

—those Germans).  Others are hated

simply for being other (those blacks, those Jews).

Then there are terrorists… but terrorism’s

different, isn’t it?  Every terrorist

seen the other way’s a freedom fighter.

And, alas,

once a freedom fighter always a terrorist.

Not so different really.  Those we hate,

we say, hate us (no doubt they do) so we

hate them.  And that hatred’s not without reason

often, on either side.

But what good can hate do?

The stocks of hate build up

(and stocks of armaments

build up).  Is our real wealth,

the small-change of our love

which passes hand to hand,

powerless to out-buy that power of hatred?