Don't Give Me More

A poem for Highly Sensitive People who don't read the news

If you can recite how many died at the scene

location of the stab wounds

name the missing girl

total number of koalas eaten by the fires

that’s it -

you are spoilt forever.

Not by curse, nor evil spell, no -

it’s mathematical: you can imbibe your daily greens

with a handful of spinach in a morning smoothie;

and never taste it, though your cells will twirl;

just as every newsflash update headline

braids our next thought.

Try step into the sunshine

with the words ‘rape of a child’ in your mouth

without your own heart raped to shreds.

See, it can’t be done.

I was taking out the bins when my neighbour asked

if I wanted to see the remains of a man eaten by a shark –

‘Aren’tcha curious?’ he asked.

He had saved the image on his phone.

Emmanuel Levinas said

to look into ‘the face of the Other’

is to learn who we are and what it is to kill.

Don’t give me more news more often.

Let me, oh lord, be the last,

never The First To Know.

But the purpled clouds sewn with pink

a stingray’s careful eyes gazing up from the seabed

I have glimpsed these just this morning.

Do you see the undulations and pulsations of that other world?

And does your heart sing, just a little?