On Facebook the tide of opinion is turning
as the media orchestrates its backlash.
They have given the people their hour of outrage
and the chance to point the finger;
after all, in the end, the stomach lurches;
too much revulsion chills the blood.
Now the story is an old one;
as it overflows the gutter
its effluent threatens high places;
it comes with a stink of something rank
that promises to shift us from our peace.
So now the big wheel spins again
and the story, this time, is 'injustice':
how lives are 'trashed' and health is 'destroyed'
by the willful, spiteful calumnies
of 'fantasists' who for legal reasons,
cannot be 'named' or 'shamed';
and there are pictures to persuade us
of these men's great pain and remind us
how they suffer in their frailty;
the photographs and the headlines grow
reflecting the 'size' of the name.
On Facebook, meanwhile, the tide has turned
and some of us are sensing a sea-change.
The world has heard enough for now
of the anguish of children long grown;
but some of us know, too, from the inside out
how innocence may shatter in a moment
and how hard it is when there are no photographs
to bring to the world the lifelong cost
of our 'historic' pain.
© Abigail Wyatt
