<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Bless This House<\/strong><\/p>\n It’s the platitudes that get us through. Bless This House Bless this house; thank God it’s not us. When earthquakes and tsunamis are images we can flick to re-runs of The Simpsons, when the snatched child is not our own, and uniform photos on flag-draped coffins are other families’ sons and husbands, we take comfort in virtual transfers to telethons […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3672","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-prose-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3672","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3672"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3672\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3674,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3672\/revisions\/3674"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3672"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3672"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3672"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n<\/strong>Bless this house; thank God it’s not us.
\nWhen earthquakes and tsunamis are images
\nwe can flick to re-runs of The Simpsons,<\/em>
\nwhen the snatched child is not our own,
\nand uniform photos on flag-draped coffins
\nare other families’ sons and husbands,
\nwe take comfort in virtual transfers
\nto telethons to ease the tortured faces,
\nand when the sirens fade to silence
\nat another door, we send flowers
\nfor the funeral of the twenty-year-old neighbour;
\nhe was riddled with leukaemia.
\nIt’s the platitudes that get us through.<\/p>\n
\nHe was riddled with leukaemia,
\nthe twenty-year-old neighbour whose funeral
\nwe send flowers to. It was at another door
\nthat the sirens faded to silence.
\nAs telethons ease the tortured faces,
\nwe take comfort in virtual transfers.
\nWhen other families’ sons and husbands
\nare in uniform photos on flag-draped coffins,
\nand the snatched child is not our own,
\nwe can flick to re-runs of The Simpsons.<\/em>
\nThe earthquakes and tsunamis are just images.
\nBless this house; thank God it’s not us.<\/p>\n
\nMaria C. McCarthy<\/strong>\u2019s poetry collection strange fruits<\/em><\/a> is published by Cultured Llama with all profits going to Macmillan Cancer Support. She writes in a shed at the bottom of her garden in a village in North Kent. Website: www.medwaymaria.co.uk <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"