Mankind needs peace more than ever, for our entire planet, threatened by nuclear war, is in danger of total destruction. A destruction only man can provoke, only man can prevent. – Elie Wiesel, Nobel laureate.
SIR: With the world on tenterhooks, with no solutions in sight to the various expanding conflicts, combined with dwindling global resources and the ravages of man-made climate change; the threat of the use of the nuclear option is not only tangible, but looms large.
A case in point is that since February 2022, Russia has threatened the use of nuclear weapons 160 times.
The 2009 African Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zone Treaty (ANWFZ) covers the entire African continent. This not only bestows on us in Africa, the moral highground, but also makes it imperative for us to admonish nuclear-armed nations and advocate for total nuclear disarmament.
In doing so we are bringing sanity, morality and much-needed light to the growing global darkness.
Africa is a necessary, pertinent voice on the world platform and an equal stakeholder in the well-being of our shared planet. Hence, my poem:
‘Nuclear Arms Bros’
Nuclear Arms Bros
Nuclear Arms Bros
An exclusive, errant, endgame, entity
Of deadly, dubious distinction
A put-down and rejection of a benevolent, beneficent, loving Creator
And a dreaded, existential, danger to forlorn, helpless humanity
No ally or friend, of animal and plant kingdoms
Monstrous to every particle of air, earth and water
Sinister, unsparing, and sworn enemies, of the forces of life
Oppenheimers’ brainchild
Mentored by Groves
By and by; adopted by the disparate, disunited, dysfunctional, Nuclear Bros
Kinfolk, yet frenemies and strangers, belonging to a recalcitrant, radioactive household
Inhabited by United States, Russia, France, China, the United Kingdom, Pakistan, India, Israel and North Korea
Whilst angry, mercurial, Iran forcefully rams open the frat-boys door, seeking a jittery, scornful, or laissez-faire bunkmate
In the accursed house of nuke-horrors; a dwelling, eternally bereft of joy, comfort, peace or security
Einstein’s; E=mc2.
Atomic bomb energy explanation: Energy equals mass times the speed of light squared
His genius unequaled, yet, crowned with a pacifict’s sober plea
Even so, America’s Little Boy and Fat Man
End-products of fission and fusion chain reactions, explode
Over Hiroshima and Nagasaki
Whilst, Russia’s Csar Bomba, held in abeyance, for another fateful day
Weapons of mass destruction stockpiled for global doom
To be deployed sooner or later
By immoral, cowardly, evil and demented actors
Nuclear arsenals prepped; absent planetary exit routes to Sirius, Vega or Achernar et al.,
Alas! silly, sociopathic, and shortsighted, mankind
Stands ready to undo and trash, Creations’ matchless wonders, workings, weft, and weave, in nanoseconds
A state of affairs; defying reason, logic, morality, and sanity.
Irene Fowler.
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