Hate no more!

Crime of pride, anger, jealousy,
Sins capital, theft, murder, rape, adultery,
Pardon can all wrong-doing and all sin efface.
The Father Lord is clemency, life and grace.
Regret is human; one can always be reborn
Self-mastered, purer, wiser, richer with reform.
With the third millennium and the dawn of a century,
Some nations are sunk deep in misery,
Submitting themselves to God and his Providence.
While others have riches and science and eminence.
History repeats the story since ancient days
When Cain and Abel went separate ways;
One, self-assured, defied God by his work,
One, poet and shepherd, was bound to his flock,
Seeking no more than joys of the mind
And finding Nature amply kind.
Then Satan came and placed in the heart
A mortal venom of anger and hate,
The means that Lucifer would employ
To counter God’s work and mankind destroy.
The third millennium at last has dawned
And science reached heights we could never have dreamed.
But faced with hate man stands in despair,
For when love has fled no hope is there.
It was not humans that September day,
Who brought destruction and did slay
Innocents by the thousand as engines from the air
Crashed on a city with which none compare.
No, it is hate, hate that brings a neighbouring state
Under the heel of a tyrant irate;
Iraq, land and people, are trod to the ground
And no invasion can ease the wound.
Babylon, where gardens once hung high in the air,
Babylon, Semiramis, what beauty was there!
Now all the remains are trampled and looted,
Then come under fire from troops heavy-footed,
The G.I. who came with power yet untold
To rain down death on even the bold.
Hate it is that kept women down
And denied her the rights she claimed as her own.
Hate came to Bosnia and the Afghan city
To make them hell where men had no pity.
But all things that begin, they must have an end,
Cities and empires and every trend;
And as living beings for ever transform,
No spirit may halt or to fate bow down.
Extremists, fanatics in all religions exist;
Away with them all! lest hate persist.
Explosions and violence and suicide slaughter,
Vicious circle of hatred that gives no quarter.
What torment and woes in this world, Africa,
Palestine, Sudan, Levant, South America!
Let each forget the hate he feels
And embrace with whole heart man’s lofty ideals.
Let us turn to liberty, equality, fraternity
And practice tolerance, love and charity
The world will go well when the hearts of the great
Are back to their innocent childhood state.
Late hate go away and forever depart,
To leave only love in each childlike heart.
Man shall then find his true nobility,
Compassion, affection, and deep tranquility.

Joseph Matar
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Translated from French: K.J.Mortimer