Here’s How We Lie
One of the core pieces from MOLOK
I have to share this piece every so often at the moment. Apologies if you’ve already seen it too many times. It’s one of the first pieces I wrote for MOLOK. I remember vividly, as it was the day after the poet and scholar Refaat Alareer was killed and I was hosting a Gig for Gaza in Totnes that evening, a fundraiser for the Hands Up Project and Medical Aid for Palestine. I’d just been told by one of the nervous organisers that it ‘would be good’ if I could avoid using the word ‘genocide’ in my hosting. I disagreed that it ‘would be good.’ I used the word, of course. This was December 2023. It feels like so long ago now.
The poem speaks for itself, I hope. I was shaking as I read it and spoke the words through tears. MOLOK is half-price at the moment. There’s some good poems in it, I believe.
HERE'S HOW WE LIE Tom Hirons There was never a child And there was never a house: It must be a trick of the light. The olive trees grow And the wild herbs wave; Sweet in the evening, we lie. There was never a father And there was never a door In the house that never stood there. There was no praying or singing, Or coffee to taste; Sweet in the morning, we lie. There was never a mother And there was never a bed And no one ever gave birth. No one shed tears Or dreamed in their sleep; Sweet in the night-time, we lie. History’s a dream And the dead are not ghosts. There’s no injustice Or bloody genocide. There was never a land And the bombs did not fall, No slaughter and this is not hell. Here’s how we lie: Grass grows on the graves And the ghosts gather round To tell tales. Sweet in the evening, Sweet in the morning, And sweet in the night Of our lies.




The way “Or bloody genocide” breaks from the rhythm says it all.
Sweet in the evening and sweet in the morning...I lie...oh how I lie