(AA) Canto 70: Jihad
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King falcons of Britain, your chief song I fashion
Your chief praise I bear:
I’ll act as your bard, your judge
Your support, it befits me
Cynddelw Brydydd Mawr
Revenge
How transient that lithe-limbed lady’s life,
stooping to sow seedlings, scorched by the sun,
her face plastered with mud and dusty earth
Ukñā Suttantaprījā Ind
The Allies muster clumpetty replies,
Cluster-bombs bash, from stratofortresses,
Big-stinking paths, defenceless from the skies
Ground squadrons groan at their falling forces;
A fierce advance
Against the Taliban,
Who’ll take heroic stance, defending to a man.
Step-by-step the Allies struggle
Thro’ the rugged mountain bar,
Tho’ Taliban have fled Kabul
& battle-scarr’d Kandahar,
All the local warlords huddle
Around Bin Laden’s star,
Hiding in his protective catacoomb,
Glendower of the Tora-Boran gloom.
As every day gun-noises near
Capture draws on closer,
Fresh hopes appear, bereft of fear,
Cautiously Osama
Sped west to Pakistan thro’ the passes of Paktia.
Afghanistan
November
2001
Peace March
Nail to the mast her holy flag,
Set every threadbare sail,
& give her to the god of storms
OW Holmes
They march’d en masse into the capital;
Made a peacehugging, socialist anthill,
Heavy-hearted with forthcoming battle,
Why would the world unleash war’s terror still?
From age to youth
Human majority
Choose not the dragonstooth of Hell’s hostility.
O world! sweet world! sweet world of mine!
&… billions of others,
Would we not wish a sun to shine
Upon a world of brothers,
Why would ye wish to hear the whine
Of our wailing mothers?
For surely cruel lessons have been learnt
When Prague fell & the streets of Poplar burnt.
I wander silent thro’ the roar
Rumtumbling thro’ the crowd,
“What is life for” “Make tea not war!”
The gentle clamour loud,
The later portions of my task with firmer thought endow’d.
Hyde Park
February 15th
2003
Invasion of Iraq
The ancient tombs lie thicker on the grass;
The new graves encroach even on the highway
Outside the city-wall there is no vacant ground
Tzu-Lan
Saxons have reach’d the beach’d Shatt-al-arab,
Where Tigris & Euphrates stem their flow
Scimitars sharpening for the scarab,
Amicus est tamquam alter ego;
The serpent’s head
Call’d the fight for heaven,
Wielding a gold-plated AK forty-seven.
As when a brave, young Persian Shah
Defied Queen Victoria,
The British Navy sails to spar
Amid the streets of Basra,
With better guns & battlestar
Marches desert soldier,
Joining opening batsmen at the crease
To end the wars with this more perfect peace.
He slipt away into the night
That man men call Hussein,
For from the fight if ye take flight
Ye live to fight again
Like Washington’s irregulars & Wellington’s young Spain.
Baghdad
May
2003
Bombing Madrid
Oh, bring not then the dread report of death,-
Of eyes to loveliness forever sealed,
Of youth that perished as a passing breath
Helena Coleman
Nine hundred & eleven days are pass’d
Since 9-11 thro’ world psyche tore,
Handsome Jihadis waking from repast,
Thrust fundamentalism to the fore;
This is Jihad!
A culture & a cause,
As out of Attobad codewords conduct the Wars.
Another routine, protein day,
As rush hour fast receeded,
“The Christian elite shall pay!”
Was warning wide unheeded,
Both ETA & the IRA
Truly superceded,
Horror striking thro’ the Spanish nation,
Ignite pack’d trains at Atocha station.
Within a week the cell is found,
Some dirty hideaway,
Arm’d police surround the plot of ground,
Young Arabs kneel & pray,
Then blow themselves to kingdom come as martyrs pass away.
Legures
March
2003
Regime’s End
A hawk’s eye
Penetrates to the core
On a hot afternoon
David Rubadiri
Pursuing the ‘most wanted’ deck of cards,
Two pictures caught, their lavishlarge mansion
Reduced, their father’s kingdom torn to yards
The focal point of the world’s attention;
Four-hour fire-fight
Odai & now Qusai
Are finally in sight, mark’d by the sniper’s eye.
Only the Ace of Spades remains,
The very ultimate goal,
First target of the Allied pains
Ten short minutes from his fall;
Namore the tyrant hydra reigns,
They’ve found him in a hole,
Without an army & without a plan,
Dishevel’d & ignoble… an old man.
They led up him up into the light,
Glanc’d he ‘cross the river
Where shines the sight, fabulous, bright,
Spinal spinning shiver,
Best of his golden palaces commandeer’d forever.
Tikrit
September
2003
Suicide Bomber
I will rise
with the soul of the earth
I will run
Moechtar Awang
As Al-Jazeera shows brave Muslims bleed
& Mosques of Leeds incite a deep passion,
Hasib abandons the young British breed –
Pop music, hedonism & fashion –
For Pakistan
Nursery of Islam,
For Allah, the Quran & elevate Imam.
“We are watchmen of the pure way,
Guardians of the martyrs,
Sons of brave Hossein Fahmideh,
Drinkers of God’s elixirs,
Death bringing to the USA
& all non-believers,
With weapons unassailable & good
Defending faith with our last drops of blood!”
On long flight home the martyr sees
Flowers cloud round heaven;
Customs a breeze, drops to his knees
At the railway station,
Life amplified for one young man plotting devastation.
Manchester
2004
Testamundi Imperatrix
The birth canal is yours
Either to open or to close.
Open it you must, dear elders
Hermana Ramarui
A poet born in Burnley, who’da thought
Of such a thing – he’d try an epic too!
Completely independent & self-taught,
Finding his art’s traditions in the zoo,
His wild heart freed
Her white wings, to obtain
This Pegasus, this steed, his precious Sylvermane.
With herbal teas & verbal tricks,
Thro’ days of molten sapphire,
He fashion’d the Imperatrix,
His ode to Britain’s empire,
& setting in its closing bricks
He read it by the fire,
A wattle church, but now what cathedral
‘Cross mind’s eye darts, & starts with a battle.
First fourteen thousand lines were done,
Among them had reviv’d
Napoleon & Wellington,
In verses keen incis’d,
Melodic’lly, & phantasmagorically contriv’d.
Burnley
2004
A New Blitz
Why came I so untimely forth
Into a world which wanting thee
Could entertain us with no worth
Edmund Waller
As Londoners rose glorious & gay,
The thirtieth Olympiad was theirs,
Whose families were flung into the fray
As thro’ the tube the first explosion tears;
Entrusted tasks,
With bomb-laden ruck-sacks,
The citizen unmasks, the terrorist attacks.
They had bought a single ticket,
Rode from Luton to Kings Cross,
Like openers at the wicket
When the Ashes first were lost,
Men of faith & peace & cricket,
But noble & brainwash’d,
A sleeper cell awoken to their rage,
A lion-thought pacing a bitter cage.
The waking world look’d on in awe,
When will we ever learn?
Still dying for the sake of war
Man’s miseries return –
The filth, the fears, the hate, the tears, the boodshed & the burn.
London
July 7th
2005
Saddam Hussein
my sister said: save me the eyes
for a pair of earrings, & Martino
our blind neighbour, bagged the guts
Piedad Bonnett
Since Tilsit’s raft two centuries are pass’d,
My, all has been remarkable sithen,
They thought that peace, now peace settles at last
Upon the warring winter-time of men;
Saddam Hussein
Face melting with the snows,
By Allied justice slain, the doors of Janus close.
Tho’ conflictions still haunts Iraq
This hanging symbolizes
The age of Mars, tied in a sack
With all his crude disguises,
Then toss’d upon the Potomac,
Drowning with the Kaisers –
So, this is the way that the World Wars die,
Not with a bang, nor whimper… but a sigh.
How many fought? How many died?
Man’s future to secure,
Tyrants defied by lands allied
Made living lives more pure,
Far from those ravages of war our ancestors endure.
Baghdad
December
2006
Mumble Words 