Apple Poem by Stug Jordan

Hatred isn't the car-bomb,
blossomed smoke and shrieking streets;
nor the feeling of the mothers
to a grocer's son behind the wheel,

it's not an Ulsterish intolerance,
grafitti torn walls; nor the drunken
hammering on a moonlit door.

It's the sound of teeth crunching through
an apple, deliberate and slow.

And heaven, beyond the smoke-filled
skies and pseudo soldiers' alibis,
flowers in infinite gardens and sweet fruit,

that fall each autumn night to a hell
where hatred bites amid the groves
of the fallen.