Like spiders that you had not seen
The kids come out from in-between
Splashing the road with khaki green –
And how their pallid faces gleam
like blossoms on a Chinese stream
The drill hall hunches on the hill.
the little soldiers gather still:
The school, where they all learned to play
is only fifty yards away
And still they come, and still they come –
we do not fight our wars at home,
Gloucestershire versus Worcestershire,
armies cascading down the hills
to valleys full of boney loam.
The wicked men of Worcestershire
pursue their wickedness, and thrive:
we don’t mind leaving them alive.
We don’t do War here any more;
we send our children far and wide
and visit all that shock and awe
on lesser breeds without the Law.
And still they come, and still they come
to take a shilling from the Queen-
They don’t read Hardy or Li Po:
they need to feel before they know
We live on history and fear,
but they live in the now and here.
They don’t use tabors when they drill
or scarlet when they dress to kill
but war’s a fashion driven thing:
so dappled coveralls provide
a uniform to wear with pride.
A skewbald rag will do as well
to blow about that foreign field
where some poor squaddy leaves behind
a life, a limb, or just his mind.
The corner seat is always there
reserved for mutilés de guerre
The ones who bled, who we ignore.
As Byron wrote to Wellington:
who cares, then, when the war is done?
And will they come, and will they come
’till the extinction of mankind?
Will the last human toddler found
pick up a stick from off the ground
to point and say “Bang Bang, you’re dead?
is it encripted in each mind?
is it engendered in our blood
by genes that cannot be denied?
And if they come, and if they come
The shining ones of space and time,
will they accept us or decline?
Will our indomitable mind
condemn us to be left behind
while sunlight falters and grows red
and every living creature’s dead
and all the oceans have run dry
and no-one’s left to see or cry
and all the stars have fled?
Drill-Hall Threnody
January 17, 2020 in Poems, Poetry, Topical Commentary, Uncategorized | Leave a comment
Like spiders that you had not seen
The kids come out from in-between
Splashing the road with khaki green –
And how their pallid faces gleam
like blossoms on a Chinese stream
The drill hall hunches on the hill.
the little soldiers gather still:
The school, where they all learned to play
is only fifty yards away
And still they come, and still they come –
we do not fight our wars at home,
Gloucestershire versus Worcestershire,
armies cascading down the hills
to valleys full of boney loam.
The wicked men of Worcestershire
pursue their wickedness, and thrive:
we don’t mind leaving them alive.
We don’t do War here any more;
we send our children far and wide
and visit all that shock and awe
on lesser breeds without the Law.
And still they come, and still they come
to take a shilling from the Queen-
They don’t read Hardy or Li Po:
they need to feel before they know
We live on history and fear,
but they live in the now and here.
They don’t use tabors when they drill
or scarlet when they dress to kill
but war’s a fashion driven thing:
so dappled coveralls provide
a uniform to wear with pride.
A skewbald rag will do as well
to blow about that foreign field
where some poor squaddy leaves behind
a life, a limb, or just his mind.
The corner seat is always there
reserved for mutilés de guerre
The ones who bled, who we ignore.
As Byron wrote to Wellington:
who cares, then, when the war is done?
And will they come, and will they come
’till the extinction of mankind?
Will the last human toddler found
pick up a stick from off the ground
to point and say “Bang Bang, you’re dead?
is it encripted in each mind?
is it engendered in our blood
by genes that cannot be denied?
And if they come, and if they come
The shining ones of space and time,
will they accept us or decline?
Will our indomitable mind
condemn us to be left behind
while sunlight falters and grows red
and every living creature’s dead
and all the oceans have run dry
and no-one’s left to see or cry
and all the stars have fled?