FREEDOM'S SUN

Great is their sun, and wide it goes
Through emptied heaven without repose;
And in these blue and glowing days
More thick than rain sheds gamma rays.

Though closer still blinds drawn may be
To keep our shelter DU free,
Yet will it find a chink or two
To slip its poisoned fingers through.

The dusty cellar blanket-clad
It, through the keyhole, makes as bad;
And through the shattered edge of tiles,
Across the cratered market smiles.

Meantime its golden face around
Is bared to all the garden ground,
With hotly tetragenic look
To search each new crop's inmost nook.

Above our hills, across our plain,
Through the bright air with shock waves vain,
To canker children as the rose,
The sun of Iraq's freedom goes.

                    (Apologies to Robert Louis Stevenson)