Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
There is More Than One Book
A civilization writes and reads its books
As poetry, pictures, prose, and glorious song
Of war and work and love and peaceful fields
Scholarship and courage and a people’s arts
But when unhappy men with an unhappy god
Maintain that their one book is all we’ll need
In submission to build an empire of death
The threat is clear: their god doesn’t want us
Reading and writing are civilization
From the very beginning of Creation
