Civilians lie, annoyingly dead,

Innocent prey of the enemy’s sport,

While wannabe gods in Washington cry:

‘You losers! We told you. It's all your fault.’

Others in Ukraine, spared till now, await

A shabby, hardly necessary fate,

And wriggle in the web where they are caught.

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A cemetery, you may think, but

No bodies lie beneath, just roots;

No unattested arms remain,

No pairs of sweaty, unclaimed boots.

Quite soon there will be vines and grapes,

And then the succulence of wine;

No trace of blown-off body parts,

Detached by shell shot or by mine.

The volunteers who tend the place

Sense no souls planted underground;

They prune and ...

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You may have the misfortune to

Live upstairs from or right next door

To somebody they want to kill.

It’s not your choice; you have no voice

In whose blood they would like to spill.

And, being close, it could be you,

Who sees the bomb fall through their floor.

No one's fault. The luck of the draw.

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They munch at scraps of bread

And gulp their meagre drink;

They borrow someone’s phone

To make one final call,

Then scrape up what he asks

To squeeze into the boat

And shiver as the sea

Sets out its fearsome stall.

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A school tragedy (A poem within a poem)

The first day of the autumn term

We knew that something was amiss.

We saw the solemn-looking staff;

We felt the pain of grief subsist.

It seemed that in the holidays

A boy called Whipps had disappeared.

Since almost thirty days had passed,

The worst of outcomes was now feared.

He was a shy and quiet boy,

To w...

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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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