Hunt the Terrorist

This damnable game. The dice do not run true,
the players are under orders, forced to throw,
and there is never an end. Each has his go.
Blindness keeps the object well in view,
until the playing-board is cracked in two.
‘But I am going to find Bin Laden though’ –
and so we play, pitched in the ebb and flow,
this night of us and them, of me and you.

How can it be the end? This never-ending
enmity, this war of like on like,
that started with a yell of stave and pike –
to cease in running silence? That sweet tending,
that fortune – to be gambled on a strike?

Or else the end is to a game’s pretending.