How can words express the senseless

Or reason explain the work of madness

Our minds stutter on an inutterable horror

The city hushes at the thought: They shot Sadat

In a slaughter more than savage

Felled by a weapon too brutal for flesh

Is this always to be the fate of the man

who dares to live for peace

To be killed for it as well

by the cowardly minions of mayhem

Why? What cause could be more precious than

a life well spent, the world sighs

How silly become the squabbles of men

when the bravest and the purest die