A Second Changes Everything

A bullet leaves the barrel of a gun

A man thinks ‘what have I done?’

The sky is cornflower blue, without a cloud

The President waves at people in the crowd

A woman turns slightly to look at him

The sun glints off the Lincoln’s trim

A watcher points a cine-camera at the parade

A secret service agent dreams of getting laid

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But one single bullet, from barrel to throat,
Choked and opened the wounds of the world,
Unfurled in the seat of a phaeton,
Played on like the most tragic of tragedies,
Greek in essence but eastern in substance,
As Sophie wilts in the lap of Austria,
A single shot through the heart of a continent,
The blood racing fast to the carriage beneath,
Signals the start of relentless war lines,
It...

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Around the shadowed corner, wicked lies,
Through telescopic lens and focussed eyes.
The autumn trees encapsulate the path
And crunch beneath the wheels they idolise.

The building crowds descend before the knoll
To catch a glimpse of this passing idol.
He, showered from all sides with the applause
And peppered from above by seasons fall.

Idyllic is this scene to which he greets,
As smi...

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