This was our time:

A time of fat,

A time of plenty,

Of gluttony, sucked straight from the vat,

And pots of gold in packs of twenty.

A time of excess,

Of haunting, taunting, flaunting,

Of stretching the zeroes to impress;

A time of unrepentant, rabid lust,

A time of cities reduced to dust.

A time of the swine, the plundered mine,

Of hate and anger drunk on wine;

...

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In the oh-Christ odour of battle,

The stunned silence of snipered streets,

They will still be doing their thing -

Plying their dark entertainment

Of tango from another world:

Two oiled figures, out of age,

Swaying to the squeezebox rhythm,

Legs hypnotically intertwined,

With an unspoken whiff of sex,

Which ramps up the indecency.

Only a matter of time now.

Below, a...

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There is no reason, no excuse,

To kidnap those who go in peace,

To hold them in the clutch of fear;

The time has come for their release.

Hate cannot be allowed to win;

We must be ready to forgive,

To reconcile, to start again.

Without this faith, how will we live?

The ordeal they are going through

Defies imagination’s well.

Their families weep night and day;

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Not much goes on around my way;

It’s probably the same near you:

The brutes of buildings, boarded shops,

Unyielding gloom, the angry street,

The young, with nothing else to do.

So when they said I should join up,

I thought to myself: ‘Well, why not?’

It seemed a chance to break away

Into a blast of a cleaner air.

Nobody said I would get shot.

So now I lie be...

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How has the shrine of wisdom and manger

Become a nightmare of fear and danger?

Lives tossed aside, like unwanted presents,

Of factory workers and toiling peasants?

How has Christmas, day of celebration,

Been transformed into a desecration,

Where the rocket, mortar, the flag and fist

Are the only currencies which subsist,

And the welcome afforded to a guest

Is replaced b...

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It’s not surprising there is some fatigue;

Far away lands of which we know not much

Soon regress once the novelty wears off

And the front page headlines have moved elsewhere.

There was that time, of course; Ukraine became

Everyone’s second-favourite country.

Top people swaggered in yellow and blue

And excited queues welcomed the displaced.

It couldn’t last. The ha...

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Each time that I observe the world,

I should spy beauty, peace and love.

Each time I listen, I should hear

The soft song of birds, or at most

The low hum of conversation.

But when I crane my neck,

Look up, down or sideways,

In front or behind me,

Or at some frantic screen,

Or catch imagined exploits,

Mouthed off on a train, or neighbours,

Hyped up in angry gatepos...

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I used to see them as a boy:

Hanging around on street corners,

Loitering with intent,

Picking off the ice cream vans, one by one.

They pandered to the masses,

Displayed all their wares:

Scalpels, sedatives and inexpensive love.

They were the last resort, the leaky policy,

The get-out-of-jail card, for one more week.

Two for the price of one, sometimes.

‘Lie down...

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Why do they try to murder Ukraine?

Why do they turn their hatred on us?

Why do they dump their anger again

And then feign surprise at all the fuss?

Why do they slaughter the best of our youth

And try to efface all the signs of our past,

Pretending to be the masters of truth,

Denying their part in each deadly blast?

Why do they wish to hollow us out

Why do they ...

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With lives defined by favour and by grace,

And slotting without effort into place,

They float above the normal folk with ease,

Their major task to cultivate and please

Their backers and the sources of their cash,

To be indulged until their fortunes crash,

At which point their approach is to deny,

To obfuscate, if needed, downright lie,

To make sure they are shielded from al...

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The oceans rise and temperatures rocket,

But we have the answer in our pocket.

A glossy document, signed and dated –

Oh, come on, you should be elated –

In which we promise to slightly reduce

The poisonous discharges we let loose.

Not straight away, of course, you understand;

There are more pressing urgencies at hand.

Nearby, a man sinks down beneath the waves;

His ...

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Gaza: a father beats the floor in grief

As he feels his son’s last desperate breath.

It seems indecent to say any more,

As when, that evil Saturday morning,

A Holocaust survivor was cut down

During a crimson-coloured bout of rage.

I tell myself: this cannot be the best

That humankind has to offer. One day,

The innocent will inherit the Earth,

The puffball types in unifor...

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The hottest year ever, again;

We’re pigging out on greenhouse gases.

COP Twenty-Eight will be here soon,

That shamefest of chancers and asses.

The leaders set themselves targets,

Then contrive to miss them by miles,

Seasoning failure with blah-blah

And their well-practiced plastic smiles.

Meanwhile, siren voices tell us:

Get out there, get out there and score!

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A cold wind is blowing;

It makes its way in,

It seeps through the brick

And clings to the skin.

It pierces the heart

With icy disdain

And somehow compels you

To look up again.

And when you look up

What is it you see?

No castle, no garden,

No landscape, no tree;

Just untidy death

Of industrial scale.

Now all human life

Is a second-hand sale.

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It looks like a toy, my flatpack of war;

I picked it up at the D-I-Y store,

But don’t be deceived and be in no doubt,

This purchase will lead to a proper rout.

It shoots from the front, it shoots from the back,

It turns our defences into attack.

It costs next to nothing this side of town;

Once it’s assembled, the bombs will rain down.

Pitilessly, no prisoners taken,

Citi...

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In Hell, the flames are rising;

Bodies lie, in respectful rows.

The dead are remembered, mourned;

As grieving begins, the missing are missed.

Borders, faith? It all means nothing;

Flags and fat commanders are a joke.

If one could define tragedy,

This is a tragedy.

And yet, what happens, happens.

The usual suspects dish out blame,

But few of us are free from blame...

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They weep in Israel;

They weep in Palestine.

They weep in Ukraine.

The whole world should weep.

Time drifts by, faster than we think;

Death queues for its daily spoils.

Someone always cleans up afterwards.

The stubbornly alive cling on to love.

Condolences rain down;

Groups huddle, trying to empathise

And multiply excuses,

While a few, buoyed up by the circus ...

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The bare facts: they killed six and wounded seventeen

When a coward's rockets destroyed the Kharkiv Post.

Another crime to add to the burgeoning list.

I got used to loss at the Post when very young;

Christmas 70: my first job when still at school.

We started together, a young student and I.

Later that day, her bike was crushed by a lorry.

I was working the vans; everyone rushe...

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I block the traffic in the road;

And chain my body to railings,

To illustrate the catalogue

Of governments’ climate failings.

I march in the demonstrations,

Sit down on the Minister’s lawn,

To give some hope to the children

And those who have not yet been born.

Last month I was twice arrested,

For challenging this dirty game.

Fines and days in court are...

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Each time he gave voice to pity, to waste –

'Abstract values' in a certain parlance –

Some people would turn and say: ‘That’s no good;

You have to take sides, find someone to blame,

Separate the good guys from the villains,

Find a flag to wave, learn a proper chant.

Your words should sting like a pointed finger.’

He understood the lure of a world

Of certainty, where al...

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If only we could get along

As neighbours, lovers and as friends;

To learn to sing each other’s songs,

And join hands as the world intends.

Some obstacle stands in the way

Of life in harmony and peace;

The children of all nations play,

But come adulthood this will cease.

For once toy guns and catapults

Are swapped for a more strong-armed state,

There seems to...

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I am a molten man;

My flabby, molten face

Is looking up at you

As you beam down from space.

I used to look quite nice

When common sense ruled here,

In times we did not trash

The assets of this sphere.

You visitors would see

A smart, contented Earth,

Which knew instinctively

How to respect its worth.

But sadly man has struck

And chopped and grou...

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It’s a tough old job,

Lugging around the body bags.

I sweat and nearly stumble

Over the packed rows of stiffs.

I think I’ll change;

Get something in an office.

There’ll be a nice comfy chair,

And morning coffee

With a tasty slice of pie.

If you can be fatigued,

So can I.

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I saw an archbishop at Waterloo:

Looking for a sandwich

And spoiling for some action

With his usual cassock crew.

I suppose that this is what they do.

I once saw Lord Longford

Swapping yarns with a Tory,

But that, as they say,

Is another story.

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Get out there and win the war, you slackers!

You’ve had tons of weapons from your backers.

They’re no excuse: defences, mines and tanks;

You’ve all you need to break enemy ranks.

Casualties? That’s just collateral stuff;

You mean you don’t know that war will be rough?

You know what they say: you can’t take the heat?

Vacate the kitchen and stare at defeat.

We’ve stumped up t...

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Quite nice, on the whole, that religious chap.

High up, apparently. (Could even be the boss;

‘Numéro Uno’, said a bodyguard.)

He gave me forty minutes;

Has some good ideas.

Drinks shandy with lunch

(‘Must keep a clear head’).

Unsurprising views on midweek sex (he is sceptical)

And Elvis impersonators (better in the North).

Unlike his autobiography,

Entitled ‘Who’...

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The sweaty boy lay on the beach;

‘You stink’, his girlfriend said.

But when awaking later on,

They sensed a world expired,

Where everyone was dead.

There was the sea, of course;

But, in truth, there was no sea.

Just their memories of water.

They longed for yesterday’s comforts:

When the old priest cackled and quacked,

Two lovers quarrelled beneath the pines

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The language becomes narrower each day;

Our actions and our words decelerate.

Only in the aftermath of slaughter

Do we attempt to find the words for death:

Some words to tick the box and shrug it off,

To come to terms with our cheap cuts of guilt.

Their boy lies, unresponsive, while we live

To relish the chaos of adulthood.

Truth is complicated. Dumped in a hole,

Until j...

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Last night, I met somebody from Ukraine;

He told me Mykolaiv was his town.

‘Oh, I’ve heard of it,’ I said. ‘In the East.’

‘Not really,’ he replied. ‘Near Odesa.’

Embarrassed, I had to apologise:

‘I got it confused with Mariupol.’

Although, of course, I realised my gaffe,

This exchange exposed the danger of war

As big-headlines and the superficial:

‘Starts with M, four sy...

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They say we are in it for the long haul,

But the long haul is a poor existence.

Your options become rather limited:

Eat, sleep, work, fight, and live on subsistence.

I’ve driven lorries long haul to the West

And been to Asia on a long-haul flight,

But never put my neighbour in his grave,

Nor hid in shelters half way through the night.

Long haul relationships can b...

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You cannot see me,

But I can see you.

That’s how the war goes.

As you cross the road

Or jump on a bus,

I will destroy you

With minimum fuss.

But if you did spot me,

You would be amazed:

I’m no great colossus.

You’d miss me in the street,

As I have grown so small,

And, under the radar,

Hardly exist. At all.

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The midnight attack got him. He swept floors

For forty years. Ordinary, no frills,

He carried on his work throughout the raids,

While cautious types like us would hunker down.

Close to retirement, he always swore

The cowards would not stop his night’s routine.

‘He’s as daft as his brush,’ some people said.

He made his choice, of course, as we made ours,

And he has paid the ...

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The pride of our town,

Its mortar and bricks

Now crumble to dust,

In heaps of destruction

And mollified lust.

Out there men are laughing

And punching the air;

They deal in high fives,

When hitting their mark

And ending more lives.

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(Up to August 2023, there have been SIX evidence-free attempts in the US to impeach President Biden. Each time Donald Trump is accused of a crime, his friends call for the impeachment of the prosecutor. Where will it all end?)

Impeach! Impeach! Impeach! Impeach!

All those who govern, judge or teach.

Impeach the man, impeach the boy,

The redwood tree, the cuddly toy.

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(On August 13, 2023, a 23-day old baby girl was killed by Russian shelling in the Ukrainian village of Shiroka Balka. Six other people were killed in the attack.)

There’s an old saying: ‘live for the day’.

I managed to do that. Twenty-three times.

And then – you probably know what happened.

You may ask the question: ‘am I angry?’

'For missing out on the next eighty years?'

W...

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Here comes my son, the soldier boy;

He’ll always be my pride and joy.

I was so proud they would deploy

Someone so young, someone so young.

His face seemed hardly out of school;

Though he was kind and broke no rule,

They knew he was nobody’s fool,

For one so young, for one so young.

A picture in his uniform,

A buttoned coat to keep him warm,

He raced towards ...

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Dancers scatter shapes through fields of war:

Dancing around the stink and smell and sweat,

Dancing to a tune or to a heartbeat,

Dancing for their supper, dancing on the dead,

Dancing through the bullets and the bayonets,

Dancing on graves and above the pyres.

It once was simple: sessions at the barre,

A bit of matinée soft-shoe shuffle,

Of tip-tap or baggy-trousered ballro...

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(Russian missiles have recently struck pizza restaurants in Kramatorsk and Pokrovsk in Ukraine, killing men, women and children)

Why do you hate our pizzerias?

Why do you target tomato and cheese?

What have you got against pepperoni?

Are our four seasons failing to please?

We pride ourselves on our ingredients;

Our service is rated second to none.

But your depraved s...

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Politics lurks everywhere we look:

Politics of dithering and backtrack,

Of scaremongers and big-boy nostalgia.

Nowhere to hide. In the US of A,

Blusterman is lying through his teeth.

Meanwhile, the same old suspects starve,

Or steal to fill their bellies or their habit,

While, next door to this, others lead their lives,

Trying honesty to round off each year’s end.

Throug...

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Jacques Tati’s films should be universal,

They have so little dialogue and chat;

Yet, for some, his cinema bewilders,

The satire and comedy fall flat.

Perhaps it is the Frenchness of it all –

A supposed intellectual conceit –

Or maybe it’s down to Monsieur Hulot,

Whom he chose to interpret and repeat.

Is there not a hint of pretentiousness,

Do miming and humour...

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The colonel’s hamming up the bonhomie,

The President spits bile for all to see,

The regimental parakeet is shot,

A corporal is cleaning up the lot.

Stand to attention, don’t bother thinking;

Get back to the trenches, cold and stinking.

Gleaming new tanks make the battlefield shake,

Flattening its residue in their wake.

We’ve got more weapons, let’s pick a new toy;

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It has been quiet here so far;

The trick is getting through the day:

Ticking off hours, counting clouds,

Throwing pebbles into the lake.

I’m just one of the backroom boys,

I scrub up and write the labels.

It’s soldiers I feel sorry for;

Christ, there goes one, then another.

Poor bastard, sent flying towards

No-man’s land. I suppose that he’s….

That’s number five this ...

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We’re all for fighting climate change,

Until the choice gets tough;

Don't try to meddle with our cars,

Our holidays, our stuff.

What beats the smell of petrol fumes,

The whiff of kerosene,

The closet full of unworn clothes,

The cinema-sized screen?

We'll stand behind the barricades

To fight off this green crap,

And watch the lifestyle we deserve

Fall stra...

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They told me: pick them up at the station.

A family, two children and their mum.

Some English. The younger boy is crying.

From beneath uncertain, hollow eyes,

The mother does her best to raise a smile.

We go to the place behind the woodyard,

Stuffed with caravans and second-hand beds.

‘Processing.’ That’s what it said on the card.

‘Her husband coming soon,’ said the fat man...

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I will not shake her hand;

Surely you understand?

My people, every day,

Will shake the hand of death.

Her kinsmen’s uncouth plan

Inflicts its pain and hurt

Across my native land,

Where bodies lie in dirt

Days after their last breath.

I was told I must play;

She is allowed to stand

And face me at the net.

It’s not her fault, and yet

I will not shake her hand.

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Five hundred days is far too long;

The war has come, good times have gone.

The chiefs talk tough, the bullets fly,

And combatants prepare to die.

The weak recoil before the strong,

Whose bells and whistles multiply

Into a dark, forbidding sky

And chill winds sing their mournful song.

Faced with this daily raid on time,

This awful pillage of our youth –

A hideous, demo...

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With every new obscenity,

We grope for the familiar

When we try to summarise death:

‘A trickle’, steady or constant,

Of civilian casualties.

Strange how we choose to illustrate

The rubbing out of human life.

Our terminology betrays

A culture ruled by quantities

And drip-drip measurements of loss,

Or, as likely, by the comfort,

Of images of gurgling streams,

Inje...

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They’re coming for the writers now;

They’ll take out poets one by one.

These tellers of the awkward truths,

Who show them up for what they are,

Appear to constitute fair game

For slingshots scrounged from death’s bazaar.

(The Ukrainian writer and poet Victoria Amelina was killed in the missile strike on the pizza restaurant in Kramatorsk).

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What if we should try the left field option?

And wandered off message or ditched the script,

And shouted out loud: ‘Just stop the killing’.

To save the people, not yet dead, from those

Like themselves, but dressed in different garb.

Save the lives, save the years still to be lived,

Stop the anguish, the tragedy, the waste.

Turn force-fed anger into peace, disarm,

Roll back ...

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Must we respect the niceties of war,

When enemies adhere to no such code?

Civility becomes a fatal flaw

Which adds some extra kilos to our load.

Our protocols are there for all to see,

And everyone agrees we must abide

By rules which are the price for living free,

Although they’re only honoured by one side.

Our foe abuses captives and denies

Their fundamental r...

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Doing the weekly supermarket shop,

He saw the cashier had just the one leg.

‘Landmine?’ he asked. ‘You’ve guessed it,’ she replied.

The man behind them pointed to his patch:

‘I was at the front. They shot out my eye.’

Still, mustn’t grumble. My friend and brother died.’

The queue went quiet; the scanner beeped on.

A woman entered, carrying a child,

Apparently deceased....

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The journalist asked nervously:

‘How many Russians have you shot?’

Juggling with his imprecision,

The marksman grunted ‘quite a lot.’

I suppose we should not be shocked,

Since he is fighting on our side,

But somehow you feel a shiver

When seeing how so many died.

You see them stalked like animals

By cold, nocturnal infra-red.

The night sight clicks; one pot,...

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Does he know that he’s lying

Or is he perhaps past caring?

Or has he now crossed that line

Where rights and wrongs intertwine

To a point beyond repairing?

Do we care if he’s telling lies?

Well, it seems that some people do;

They’ve had it up to here with him

And for the moment things look grim

For the Captain and his motley crew.

Could it be true he’s finall...

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We took back a village today.

Not much going on:

A few broken windows,

A burned-out car or two,

A corpse,

And one poor sap of a teenage soldier,

Hands on his head, crying out for Mum and Dad.

A broken old man emerges,

Shaking his fist and shouting ‘Kill them all.’

Another sits thoughtfully by the stream,

Praying for a missing child.

Our flag, mounted on a...

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It seems that everybody’s fair game now.

In the town of Dnipro the other day

Their missiles claimed a two-year-old girl’s life.

And so we still have the moral high ground,

Until such time our side does something worse.

I want to have faith, believe there’s a God,

But was a decent man nailed to the cross

To make way for this dung heap of a world,

This foul dominion of the ha...

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They are old now, almost beyond age;

Pushed around, pinned into wheelchairs.

Though chaperoned, they seem unclaimed.

They hold up placards, give a wave

And do their best to summon up a grin,

Before we spirit them toward the beaches

Where, nearly eighty years ago,

They put their young lives on the line

To keep the locals and unborn safe.

We should salute and honour them,

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As kids, enjoying usual larks,

We fell on floors and grazed our knees,

And came a cropper climbing trees.

Slingshots and conkers tied to strings

Were weapons made from our own hands;

We fought in playgrounds and on swings.

Now we are adult and fight wars,

But our manoeuvres stay the same.

There are high stakes in our new game,

It’s true, and more expensive toys,

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It can help you pass your A-levels

Or similar bog-standard tests;

It will cook up birthday verses,

Can sketch some blackbirds in their nests

Or write a decent theme tune for TV.

But Beethoven’s ninth symphony,

The trio from the Rosenkavalier,

Gaugin’s Christs or the Mona Lisa?

Such inspiration it can’t get near.

AI is the service of the bland.

The risk is it will unde...

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We must have spoken far too soon;

I think we may have jumped the gun

When we waved patriotic flags

And romped around in blokey fun.

We thought that Bakhmut had caved in;

We thought that we would run the place,

But now it seems that victory

May bounce right back into our face.

We have lost thousands of our men,

Who we knew were expendable;

But we thought our ...

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We live close to the stars,

But closer by the days:

From times which have long gone

Till the dawning of tomorrow.

Consider, for one moment,

The stars and the days, piled high:

The waste,

The loss,

The pain,

The grief,

The tortured sky.

The sorrow.

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I’m sure they didn’t mean to finish here.

They once were young men; they are still today.

Time has not aged them; boyish souls outlive

Their mortal frames, long since dissolved to dust.

Each pristine grave is their nobility,

A passport to well-deserved endurance.

From all around the hubs and spokes of Earth,

They came and died from homelands far away,

In Britain and the loy...

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Like a giant can of insect spray,

Or some demented farmer blitzing weeds,

The looming tank, vertiginously filmed,

Mows down a flock of soldiers in retreat.

Flushed out from their camouflage,

They scatter or they bite the dust.

Whose side were they on?

What does it matter?

You still have to step over them.

The military play their games,

The politicians giggle;

Somew...

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‘Picasso’s not all he’s cracked up to be.’

He’d had a few by then, but understood

The dangers of hype and adulation

Of the spineless, unconditional kind.

We were on the last train from Fenchurch Street;

Among the massed drunks now quiet or depressed,

The air was thick with smoke and rancid ale.

At first, when he leant over to my side,

I groaned, half-expecting some hard-luc...

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Eric Morecambe and Ernie Wise

Sat reading in bed in those innocent days.

‘What’s the book?’ Eric says.

‘Kings and Queens of England’.

‘Pardon?’

‘Monarchs!’ Ernie cried.

Eric looked suitably mortified.

From that point of view,

Monarchy’s all right.

‘And what do you do?’

They have nice hats,

A twinkle in the eye

And friends in high places

(Though not as hi...

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‘How many of you live here?’

The man with the clipboard was asking.

Numbers are not my strong point

And I get a bit tongue-tied.

I reply, in a roundabout way:

‘Well, some, here and there;

Not many now;

Fewer than there used to be.’

‘Is that the best you can do?’

He snapped, looking peeved.

I slope off, inadequate,

Fumblingly imprecise.

Turning round, I see ...

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Had he been riding the moped,

Of which there was now little left?

From behind my taxi window,

Cocooned in sweetly freshened air,

I imagined the pain and death

And the relatives, all bereft.

Peering out, I could see him, sprawled,

Bloody, like meat. ‘Airport soon, sir’

Announced the driver. Soon I'm gone

From this unyielding, lethal place,

Flying home through thin-aire...

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Folding up your kit,

Cleaning out your gun,

Marching side by side,

Writing home to Mum.

Lobbing a grenade,

Fingers in your ears,

Larking with your mates,

Sinking twenty beers.

Blow the bastards up,

Keep your powder dry,

Punch the freezing air

As you watch them die.

Paying off the tarts,

Clearing body parts,

Bullet in the head:

Sorry ...

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We do not know the future tense round here,

But deal in possibilities and mays;

Learning hypotheticals and options

And other such conditional displays.

Predictions in our world remain unsafe;

Coming weeks and months are speculation.

We may be staying here or going home;

Others will decide our situation.

We say ‘good morning,’ ‘thank you for your help’:

Phrases ...

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Another toddler has copped it today;

They dragged him from the mess but then he died.

Attacks could come with heaviness of heart;

Those in charge know full well what may happen,

And might express regret for dirty tasks.

But no, each life has now become fair game;

All are equal before the randomness,

The cheap terror of such vague precision.

Yes, the good die young, but the ...

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Long ago, it was the wife who would push him

-‘These are our sort of people,’ she would say-

To take that job, which he couldn’t manage

And came home each evening utterly spent.

Oh, the ordeal of dinners with the boss

And Councillor Twitface for Sunday tea,

When he would have preferred to mooch around

And watch the football or listen to jazz.

That certain kind of snobb...

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We think the only victims in a war

Are those with names engraved who rise no more.

But we should spare a thought for those who live,

Those damaged souls with so much more to give:

Exploits in the battle oft unspoken,

Hearts and minds decayed or simply broken.

So many of them suffer from a loss

And find it tough to put a smiling gloss

On situations which become so hard

Th...

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Below par at love and related acts,

He watched the village, knowing how it worked.

He spied on locals, testing their strengths;

Weaknesses too: drink, cards, the other sex.

They all said his life would end up badly,

And it did: shot, in his lair of blackmail.

The obvious suspects: the vicar’s wife,

Whom he caught horizontal one hot night;

The bank manager, dipping in the sa...

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She flaunted her quiet little lover,

Who made no fuss and took out the empties;

Hopped off the bus with a spring in his step

And provided the paradise she craved.

Her friends would say: ‘she looks so much better’.

But now he has left, she sits, immobile,

And when she moves, she spreads herself too thin,

Her cascade of tears moistening the street;

Bereft of all sympathy, exc...

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These pictures look quite dated now,

Like all those old films that we see.

That’s you, returning on the bus,

And, picking up the kids, it’s me.

Back in the glory days of peace,

We lived together hand in glove.

Our future seemed mapped out in stone,

The present sparkled with our love.

Now that seems like another world;

Your letters from afar arrive,

Whil...

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You hear your mother's voice,

You hear your father's voice,

From beneath the rubble

Of the savaged building.

Happily credulous,

You dig with your bare hands

And cry out loud for help.

But none comes, nothing moves.

Real life, in guise of death,

Has stripped away the scales.

With its offending heart,

The cruel ventriloquist,

Yapping at your conscience,

Is put ...

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In the great tempest of eighty-seven,

Mum and Dad remembered milk bottles

Bouncing and blowing down their quiet street.

Incredibly, none of them were broken,

Though hordes of healthy trees were smashed to bits.

But soldiers do not escape so lightly:

One bullet shot is easily enough

To shatter for good their unprotected shield.

The broken glass has to be collected

And put...

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Courtesy of lily-livered missiles

(Tactical? Strategic? Who on Earth cares?)

Ukrainians lose the rest of their lives,

While eating lunch or dinner in their flats.

My thoughts drift to twittish highland royals,

And double-barrelled toffs who hunt for stags,

Which bleed and stagger round for days on end

Before they die in bouts of howling pain.

It is all part of a continuum:

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I’m batting at eternal number ten.

My mediocre talent falls apart;

Soon I’ll be walking back on nought again.

I’m in a team of skilled, well-coached young men,

Convincing me that cricket is an art.

I’m batting at eternal number ten.

I do not move my feet or sidestep when

A lethal bouncer flies towards my heart.

Soon I’ll be walking back on nought again.

I ...

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For me, Galton and Simpson were up there

With Pinter, Stoppard, and all the others.

‘The Reunion Party’ was their peak.

Nineteen sixty-five, when Tony Hancock

Struggled on through his final, fading depths.

Not seen for twenty years, his army mates,

Grown old, have changed, and not for the better.

Oh, disappointment, exasperation!

(‘Oh God, man. You’re not a squirrel; have a...

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Some people wilfully tread on spiders,

But I don’t.

Some squash ladybirds for fun:

That’s not my style.

Some laugh as they crush an ant:

I can’t do that.

You can see where this is going:

Some people are just different.

They are born that way;

Or do they become like that?

They can’t all be sadists;

Sometimes it’s just circumstances.

So, could I become t...

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When the old Soviet leaders

Went hunting for the day,

The animals were sedated

To make them easy prey.

Some decades in the future,

They send in droves to war

Minds numbed so much they do not know

What they are fighting for.

I guess there is a parallel;

It always has been thus.

Lemming and lamb go to their doom

With bare bones of a fuss.

While some...

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This indescribable Hell.

Go ahead, describe it:

You are bound to come up short.

Those nearby can’t do the job;

To them it’s still neighbourhood,

And photographs, as we know,

Will never do it justice.

Perhaps this is the way Hell

Gets away with its nonsense;

Its mammoth violation

Too vast to get a grip on,

So that no one even tries.

A brief sun bursts through the...

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It’s only anonymity

Which makes us go to war;

When soldiers meet up face to face

They wonder what it’s for.

They talk of friends and relatives,

About whom they all care;

Discuss the beauty of the world,

Which they delight to share.

They do not bow to nation states

Or military types,

Whose mission is to keep them down

By tapping on their stripes.

T...

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When you are young,

You wonder what life is about;

When you are old,

You still do not know.

It’s only when you’re middle-aged

That you think you understand,

Because of tears you shed at funerals

And the trail of your footprints in the snow.

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The risk is there's nothing left but hate,

Or loathing and calls for revenge.

Should we prevail, one understands;

In battle, feelings are stripped down,

Until all that remains is raw,

Sensitive to the lightest touch

And far too easily provoked.

It’s simple, from many miles away,

To preach reconciliation

And call for offering of hands.

Less straightforward if family

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We used to sit out in the Maidan Square

Before the war, and chat into the night;

Our arguments continued well past twelve.

We called ourselves the late show, like TV.

But now there is a late show every day:

Late husbands, brought back home in body bags;

Late wives, uncovered by a fire crew;

Late children, each identified by toys,

Beneath the expendable wrecks of schools.

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It’s rare to stumble across this:

Land left without a manicure,

Raw nature, standing untended

Or, at least, unchanged for a while,

Allowed to spread its arms and breathe,

To relax, far from the treadmill.

Behind the padlock on the gate,

A run-down, flaking, disused shed

Is masked by brambles, overgrown;

A rusty post clasped half-way up

By suffocating, unscythed grass.

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Tread softly, the poet said, on my dreams.

Ukraine: a girl with a hunger for life

Took a detour on her way to school

To pick some early snowdrops for the class,

And some as a present for the teacher.

Cowardice is not equal in a war:

If you run from fighting, you are punished,

But if you scarper after laying mines,

You are feted as a hero, adorned

With medals, as your unk...

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There is no way to sugar coat this pill;

The empty arm which dangles from the bricks

Defies all thoughts and prayers and commentary.

The old man howling for his missing wife,

His private grief invaded by the hacks,

Speaks words of simple, bitter dignity,

For viewing on the global carousel.

As leaders bring their unkept promises,

The numbers climb, as on election night.

T...

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You get the feeling he would cross the road

To not to have to give you time of day,

Though in his flowered garden, taut, he dotes

On children, bouncing them upon his knee,

And will cherish every stricken insect

Like a father cradling his newly born.

In working hours, required stiffness

Does not prevent him cracking the odd joke.

He says it’s nothing personal (it is);

It ...

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It’s bizarre that Eurovision,

That riot of drivel and camp,

Became a combatant in war:

Builders bopped to the Ukraine song.

Politicians of every sort

Are decked out in blue and yellow.

Hollywood types, shocked in their awe,

Enlist and worship at the shrine.

Lottery winners in hard hats

View body bags through telescopes.

Pray silence for the giant screen.

The workin...

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The theatre of war

Is two steps from your chair.

You watch it on the screen,

You calculate the odds

While weighing up the form

And placing your next bet

On where the bombs will fall.

Those in the know predict

That Kyiv is odds-on.

The news comes through at six:

Bulls-eye! Time to collect,

For your holiday cruise.

But please, gamble responsibly!

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Wars are the usual bag of tricks:

Fought by the same class of suckers,

Straight out of factory or school,

Uncomplaining and scared to death.

Heads crammed with patriotic guff,

They squirm in trenches at the front

And finish dead or short of limbs.

Those who survive, when they return

To a country fit for heroes,

Are told, in no uncertain terms,

To shut up and to know t...

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I understand but don’t rejoice;

Steps may be both sad and vital.

In Prague in sixty-eight they said

That no one argues with a tank.

How right they were, although one man,

Brave as hell at Tiananmen,

Stood firm and stopped some in their tracks.

Now ministers of every hue

Queue up to mount these phallic toys,

The pitiless monsters of hate,

Murder machines for far-flung ...

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Lone husbands shed tears at birthday greetings,

Texted by their wives, estranged in the West.

Today’s public face of chilly winter,

The old man shivers for the cameras.

Helpless, like a baby, he tries language,

But no one cares. The caravan has moved on

To the banter of fighters in the East,

Joshing weakly as they scoop up bodies.

Life stirs somehow beneath a bombed buildin...

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Should I listen to Tchaikovsky

At the opera or ballet?

Should I enjoy his symphonies,

In recordings by the Hallé?

The ‘Little Russian’ tests our taste;

Some say it denigrates Ukraine.

And what about the Eighteen-Twelve’s

Bombastic cannon-ball refrain?

Divide the artist from his art?

That’s not the point; this artist’s great.

It’s not his fault where he was b...

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A friend of mine once said these words to me:

‘All friends are just a waste of space.’

(I wondered why he was my friend!)

‘They’re unreliable, you see.

They let you down and disappoint

And put your nose right out of joint.

They claim to love, but in the end,

You can’t believe what’s etched upon their face.’

‘Their comradeship is no more than a front.

They all end up...

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Does anyone here believe in God?

Surely, if you believe in God,

You believe, for all its faults, in peace,

And there’s precious little sign of that.

Men dressed in gaudy robes and giant hats,

With pots of incense which they wave about,

Will bless all sorts of fighting and atrocity.

Blessed are the warmakers now, it seems.

That said, we know God is out there somewh...

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Think pointless wars in places like Ukraine,

Where ungrown men are daily bashed to bits.

The battle rages on through sun and rain

And morning's loss foretells a later gain.

Lines move or bend, but finish up the same,

As reinforcements make sure each piece fits.

The casualties have no time to explain

The part as zero-sum pawns in this game.

The dead, we claim, like...

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I chanced upon karaoke

Before I knew it in the West.

One evening in Yokohama,

As beer and saké flowed, we heard

‘My Way’, a classic of its kind,

Mauled by half-drunk salarymen.

Sumo-like bouncers were on hand,

But, in truth, there was no trouble.

As we left, ‘Fly me to the moon’

Was warbled gamely through the smoke.

Later, all staggered on to trains,

Or crashed in ...

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Behind the crouching silence,

All human life is there.

The règlement de comptes,

The murderous affair.

The husband’s racked with jealousy,

The lover’s gripped by fear,

The old men play their dominos,

Now tragedy is near.

The policemen bow their heads

And lift the bodies up;

The wife flicks back her hair

And sips her coffee cup.

The lights blaze in...

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(On 3 January 2023, Russia announced that 89 of its soldiers had been killed in an attack on Makiivka, Donetsk. Ukraine claimed that the number of dead was 400.)

I once travelled home on a London train.

It was packed; people pressed against the doors.

As I squeezed aboard, I noticed a sign:

‘Capacity four hundred; eighty-nine

Seated, the rest standing.’ I looked along

T...

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Living here in the free world,

We can get up every day,

Expressing our opinions

And saying, more or less, the things we want to say.

Inconvenient, no doubt, for some, at times,

Who cannot hide the truth or cover up their crimes.

While elsewhere it can be dangerous to even smile

Or raise an eyebrow, clench your teeth (or fist),

For showing disapproval puts you on a...

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These little parachutes of hope and love,

Which float beneath a scowling new year sky,

Will counteract, with luck, the force of hate,

The universal half-truth, and the lie.

Though we take pot-shots at the usual crowd,

And don’t look up above to see what’s there,

The parachutes may lead to better things

Than one more year of feeble, standard fare.

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