A Moloch is a Canaanite idol to whom children were sacrificed as burnt offerings – religion doesn’t get much more cruel than that! This is a clear reference to the poetry of Allen Ginsberg without whom this video would never have existed. Dedicated to my granddaughter, Leah, who was deeply influenced by the poem Howl.
In the penultimate verse there is a reference to the mindless assassination of Joe Cox MP and another to the Judeophobic attacks in Paris. The last line introduces a piece of English humour and , I hope, some obvious self-deprecation.
Many are the Molochs
Many are the Molochs, ever-beckoning
Illuminating those lacklustre lives
Awaiting their days of reckoning
Where an unthinking thuggery thrives
These graven images appear to choose
Who are to win applause
And those destined all to lose
O, destroyers of the righteous cause!
Blame cannot be upon them cast
Nor shame placed at their feet of clay
Thus it will for eternity be, as it has been in the past
All responsibility must with humanity lay
With those who the keys to power hold
Those believers who, in reality, decide
What truths and lies are written or told
As they the lambs from sheep divide
O, Moloch in the sinful city!
Moloch erect on village green
Personalities divine, devoid of pity
Wherever man moves are Molochs seen
Though heads may be hidden in great grey clouds
Or disguised as mysterious monumental crosses
Covered by religious shrouds
Or overgrown by invasive mosses
Molochs in the graveyards
By which villages are surrounded
Devouring even the very diehards
Who are accused of crimes unfounded
Molochs beyond the prison fence
To discourage all escapees
Human blood their recompense
No human effort can them please
A Moloch outside a meeting place
That devoured an elected representative
A young woman who refused to hide her face
A mother and wife, bright and sensitive
Moloch at a French concert hall
Eating the innocence of youth
Or shooting in a shopping mall
Suppressing the last shreds of truth
Moloch in the morning mist
Moloch in the air of night
Moloch by the rain clouds kissed
Maliferous mystery of their might
Molochs on the playing field
Where the petrified poet frolics
Molochs who all power wield
Such a mass of mindless Molochs!