Guernica Poem by Sheena Blackhall

Most of the men off fighting in Civil War
Our women and children haggling over bargains.
And then three hours bombardment from the skies
Like a place of card, our town, stamped on by giants

Those who hid in the fields were soon machine gunned.
The wooden walls of our homes, a red inferno

Wives wailed over the dead, blown up by shrapnel
Horses and bulls lay crushed by masonry.

Doves flew in all directions, panic-stricken.
I ran wildly ahead towards a bomb hole
Dived inside the churned up, muddy crater.

Bullets ricocheted, and cars exploded
Riddled corpses leaked blood on the streets

Children huddled round a parish priest
Too shocked to speak. In tatters, every one

The Plaza was a wall of living flame,
All that was left, a church, a tree, a factory

Charred bodies will forever haunt my dreams.
And this was how war came to Guernica