You can hear it, whining of evil,
a scandal to the sky… .
This is the righteousness of evil.
This is the raucous might of evil, the muscle
of evil – the morning-blue, the halcyon innocence
we live by, hounded and harrowed and harried
by the whining sound of a lurking drone.
You grow accustomed to it
like it was the iris of your eye.

And so, you scavenge your wits
for something more winning to say
than that this is an inching cancer married
to a second one, growing like a wedded feud
of two – and the blighted day, twice-blighted.

Omar Sabbagh is a widely published British-Lebanese poet based in Beirut.

Poetry submissions to thursdaypoems@gmail.com