The tears of a nation are shared by us all,
We stand with those countries whom terror befalls;
The innocent taken, destroyed by the vile,
Their heinous objectives we can’t reconcile,

Or count them as acts of religious devotion;
No God promotes terror, their piety’s a notion
To falsely give hope to the slaves they recruit,
With violence and fear they help hatred take root.

Such action must only increase our resolve
To rid us of terror and hatred dissolve;
We stand against terror today and forever,
Most importantly standing: always together.

 

A former Human Resources Manager, Karen Mooney of Moira, Northern Ireland, started writing in January 2016 following her father’s illness and subsequent death, continuing to publish two poetry booklets to raise funds for charity.  She uses her poetry to support the delivery of health awareness sessions to community based groups.  More of her poetry can be here:

https://www.observationsinrhyme.com
https://soundcloud.com/karen-mooney-755009817
www.facebook.com/ObservationsInRhyme

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12 Responses

  1. Joseph Charles MacKenzie

    “Tears of a nation…” By this do you mean the perfectly impassive, indifferentist response of majority communist Britons consisting of a few candles, some flowers, and millions spent screaming at benefit concerts that really only benefit the musicians?

    “The innocent taken…” By the innocent do you mean the girls who went to fall down in worship before what amounts to a burlesque stripper named Ariana Grande that no girl of any moral upstanding would ever think to spend money on?

    “…destroyed by the vile” By the vile, do you mean the mothers who weaned their children on the kind of filth Ariana Grande and the American music industry is all about, i.e. the destroyers of souls?

    “religious devotion…” By this do you mean the secularist/globalist religion of the United Kingdom known as liberalism which is even more culturally and economically erosive element in Britain today?

    “With violence and fear they hope hatred takes root…” By this are you referring to your government’s Red Scare propaganda targeting Putin who is a convert to Christianity and who is now subject to new aggressions from NATO? Is the “fear” the fear of any sane human being to seek a job in leftist UK institutions of higher education?

    By “stand against terror” I take you mean that you are a pro-life activist?

    By “always together” to you mean collaborating the majority leftists in your country who promote pro-Islam, pro-immigration, and pro-Europe policies?

    I’m just wondering. Because if poetry has no relation to truth, then how are we really different from the Saracens?

    Reply
    • Ep Stein

      Mr MacKenzie, I am frankly perplexed and morally offended by your contribution In respect of of Ms Mooney’s work.

      I am embarrassed on your behalf, by the manner in which you clumsily attempt to present what amounts to nothing more than a vile diatribe of your personal opinion on the Uk, it’s Government and population, pathetically veiled as an intellectual, academic analysis of her work.

      I refer to your web page, specifically “My Philosophy,” which so eloquently enlightens the reader that “The divine purpose of art is to glorify God. The moral purpose of art is to inspire men to goodness. The metaphysical purpose of art is to place the intellect in a proportionate relationship with reality.”

      It is only my own, state educated opinion, that “Shared Tears,” certainly aspires to the “moral purpose of art” you espouse. Whilst Ms Rooney’s work, again in my humble opinion, most definitely “places the intellect in a proportionate relationship with reality,” your questions must raise question as to your own intellectual understanding of what is a straightforward observation on a straightforward subject. Might I further suggest, that it is none the less “classical” for its construct.

      But then, what would I know? You are, after all, an author, some of whose sonnets “surpassed many of Shakespeare’s!”

      Reply
      • Joseph Charles MacKenzie

        But aren’t leftists morally offended by virtually everything that surpasses their literary parochialism? Forgive me for not shedding a tear at your being “morally offended.” It’s just that melodrama went out with Pixérécourt.

  2. B. S. Eliud Acrewe

    Ms. Mooney, I appreciate the sentiments in this poem and in “38 Thousand Feet,” as well as Mr. Sale’s “Hell Arrives in Manchester.” In addition, I appreciate Mr. MacKenzie’s questions, particularly his insistence upon the truth. What is nice about SCP is serious poets can discuss serious issues, and Mr. Mantyk balances them all, including his own work. He has done an excellent job managing the divergent voices of this, what Mr. McGrath, in a moment of enthusiasm, has called the “most talented and traditionally minded lineup of contemporary poets writing in the world today.” The poets of SCP do respond to life and the events of the world.

    In light of, or despite, what T. S. Eliot has written in his essay “Tradition and Individual Talent,” that “Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality. But, of course, only those who have personality and emotions know what it means to want to escape from these things,” I offer this recent sonnet.

    London: 3 June 2017
    by Basil Drew Eceu

    Oh, London, weep for thy pure innocents,
    those slaughtered souls killed by the terrorists,
    who have been murdered by knife-wielding wrists,
    those worshippers of stone and wickedness.
    Forget not in your books those witnesses
    who faced such hatred and satanic fists,
    whose only crime was but to coexist,
    and long to live their lives in love and bliss.
    Their fates now fill the social media;
    their martyred blood’s recalled across the Net;
    their living anguish is immediate,
    their families and friends filled with regret.
    Their names, in Time’s Encyclopædia—
    Will we remember? Or will we forget?

    Reply
    • Joseph Charles MacKenzie

      Thank you, Mr. Acrewe, for your important reminder of Eliot’s statement the principles of which you have actually applied to your sonnet, one of those rare poems we hardly ever see these days which ends in what I would call a “pregnant interrogation” awakening a more critical approach to the subject.

      Reply
  3. Lorna Davis

    Karen, thank you for this poem about the attack on your nation. I agree with you, that the acts and objectives of terrorists can not be reconciled with any religious beliefs, although every major religion in the world has blood on its hands. It seems to me that it’s always, or nearly always, the leaders who use religion to recruit followers for the sake of increasing their own wealth and power. Terrorism is just a military tactic used to topple a strong opponent by killing the resolve of the populace. But as long as the people of a nation continue to stand together in peace, terror as a tactic has failed. From one former HR Manager to another, well done.

    Reply
    • Joseph Charles MacKenzie

      How many dead—100, 500, 1,000, 5,000—will it take before the left abandons its communist mantra that singing Kumbaya with the lowest, most ignorant elements of society is the definition of “success” against terrorism?

      Never mind. The taste for self-inflating, emotion-mongering prosody by state-schooled amateurs whenever another British city is bombed rather says all we really need or, dare I say, care to know.

      Reply
      • Lorna Davis

        Perhaps I should have left the words “in peace” out of my comment, and simply left it at a nation standing together, whether in peace or in war. I do not recommend singing Kumbaya with ISIS. I wouldn’t sing Kumbaya with the KKK either, or any other group that advocates violence, although anyone who’s been around a few decades understands that sometimes war is unavoidable. How are shared tears or standing together as a nation “communist”? And what would you have the people of Britain do? I have admired and appreciated the sheer quantity of knowledge you’ve shared here about history and poetry, as well as the obvious quality of your education. But I doubt that a poem will solve this problem, no matter where the poet is schooled. What would you recommend? A pogrom against all Muslims in Britain? Outlawing popular music, covering singers in burkas, public punishments for the vile mothers who let their girls go to concerts? Bombing the entire area ISIS controls, without regard to the innocent people who are trapped there? This situation was centuries in the making; no poem will solve it.

        And I ask in all sincerity, how are the sentiments in Ms. Moody’s poem that different from Mr. Eceu’s sonnet? Mr. Eceu’s victims are also innocents, “whose only crime was but to coexist”. He asks the city to weep, and to remember the victims. One poem prompts you to question the cultural, religious and political leanings of the poet and her entire homeland; the other evokes no such response. If we’re judging these poems according to the validity of the viewpoint expressed, what’s the difference?

  4. Joseph Charles MacKenzie

    Lorna Davis does make a good point that the two poems on this page, alas, are essentially the same. And I do believe her question deserves an answer.

    Indeed, the answer was given to the entire world in the majestic encyclical letter of Pope Pius XI, Quas Primas, December 11, 1925, and that answer is nothing other than the social reign of Christ the King.

    As poets, our work must seek to know, love, and serve Him to whom all power of heaven and earth has been given.

    In order for our Anglo-American poetry to rise above the level of borrowed emotions and trite conventions, yea, to reach those heights of perfection attained by the great masters of the past, Christ must reign in our minds, which should assent with perfect submission and firm belief to revealed truths and the unchanging doctrines of His infallible magisterium. He must reign in our wills, which can only be rectified in conformity to His laws and precepts. He must reign in our hearts, which should everywhere spurn our base desires and love God above all things, cleaving to Him alone. He must reign in our bodies and in our members, which should serve as instruments for the interior sanctification of our souls.

    This is the answer I have magnified in my work.

    For, the social cultivation of things beautiful, meaningful, and true—and the all-important patronage and support of those who produce them—is a sure path to peace which is not merely the absence of strife, but the enjoyment of a divinely directed order. This, indeed, is the motive and inspiration of my Sonnets for Christ the King. http://www.mackenziepoet.com

    Reply
    • Lorna Davis

      Thank you for taking the time to answer my question, Mr. MacKenzie. I admire your dedication to your faith, although I hope the path to peace will not require the forced imposition of any one religion on the world. That has rarely been a peaceful path. And, to my mind, the universe is much too big to contain only one path to the Truth. But I’m afraid my religious views are as self-taught as my poetry skills; I’m indeed an amateur in both areas.

      Reply
  5. B. S. Eliud Acrewe

    One of the reasons I like Ms. Mooney’s poem is that she uses the balladic couplet here; it is probably also why I am particularly pleased with Ms. Foreman’s “I Think I Like You Better.” Both have used what I call the dodeca, three quatrains of iambic heptameter couplets, a structure I find particularly fascinating.

    I have used the dodeca in dozens of poems, only one of which I will bother this fine group of poets with:

    Plato and Aristotle
    by Ercules Edibwa

    Broad-minded Plato focused on the love of the ideal,
    while Aristotle thought about the beauties of the real.
    Where Plato liked to think but on the unity of life,
    the Stagirite preferred to contemplate class, cast and type.

    When Plato loved the virtuous, the good, the true, and kind,
    then Aristotle loved the excellencies of the mind.
    If Plato wanted so to fix his heart upon one thing,
    why Aristotle was enamoured of varieting.

    Though Plato found himself within the confines of a cave,
    shrewd Aristotle longed to take in more than he could save.
    Dark Plato played on distant shores and gazed upon the moon.
    Light Aristotle lit the World, sunshine was his boon.

    Now for some comments.

    1. One of the nice things about SCP is that poets will, albeit only occasionally, bring the full brunt of their criticism to one’s poetry or ideas, and one can find out how deeply one holds to one’s own creations. The person I am most thankful for at SCP is Ms. Asch, who critiqued my Wordworthian “On Westminster bridge, March 22, 2017.” Although I disagreed with her, and argued my points on this site, her negative criticisms were superior to all the “likes” I got on other sites where the poem was also published, and her revisions were remarkable, showing artistic creation in action.

    2. Though Ms. Foreman’s dodeca is more polished than Mr. Edibwa’s, or Ms. Mooney’s poems, and is indeed, as I have said elsewhere, an excellent work, one of the things that I like about Ms. Mooney’s poem is that she balances two-syllable with one syllable rhymes [feminine and masculine rhymes], ending her poem nicely on two syllables.

    3. Mr. MacKenzie’s questions, in and of themselves, are a prose-poetic outpouring.

    4. Mr. Eceu’s Miltonic sonnet is not as positive as Ms. Mooney’s heart-felt dodeca.

    5. Apparently, “the tears of a nation” are not “shared by all.” In a recent soccer game in Australia, between Saudi Arabia and Australia, when the stadium stood respectively for a moment of silence for the two Australian women who were stabbed to death by the Muslim terrorists on June 3rd in London, the Saudi team would not stand for a moment in silence, and went out on the field, or sat on the bench.

    6. Ms. Davis asks an important question, that members of SCP, I imagine, would answer differently. Should poems be judged on their sentiments? Because of comments both she and Mr. Mackenzie have made, I believe they believe this more deeply than I do; and that could be a flaw in my moral upbringing; but I tend to agree with the school of poetic thought that argues that a poetic creation is, in an important sense, separate from its creator.

    7. Although I disagree poetically, politically, and intellectually with Ms. Davis’ 72-lined poem “Tribal Lament,” she attempts more in her poem than the aforementioned poets do in theirs, and it is such risk-taking that I applaud.

    8. One of the things I like about Ms. Mooney’s attempts at trying to make sense of the hatred we find in “a world that looks better at thirty-eight-thousand feet,” is that she attempts it at various vantage points. This is something I am attempting to do as well in my docupoetry. We may never get it right; but at least we are trying.

    9. In looking up where Ms. Mooney is from, I was surprised to learn that the Battle of Moira may have been the largest battle ever fought in Ireland, and resulted in the death of Congal, and the retreat of Domnall Brecc.

    10. Forgive my over-the-top comments, and my insistence on using “charichords,” anagrammatic heteronyms; they help me to understand how difficult it is to understand another time, another culture, and another person.

    Reply
  6. Lorna Davis

    Thank you, Mr. Acrewe, for your wise comments. I am finding it to be a slippery slope when reading poetry to not judge the content. Even if I’m complimenting one, it’s often at least partly, if not mostly, because I love the message. Reading your analysis allowed me to read Ms. Mooney’s poem again and appreciate the feminine and masculine rhymes that I had not noticed before. I have a lot to learn. Still, a perfect poetic structure with nothing to say is a little like a salty cake with exquisite frosting. You can admire the baker’s skill, but you’re not likely to want a second bite.

    Reply

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