The odd small child has copped it,

A writer here, a pensioner,

And, just around the corner,

An engineer.

It’s the same old detritus of war;

Keep moving now,

There’s nothing to see,

Nothing to fear.

The single mum with stumps for legs

Has made somebody’s day,

Just like the school and hospital,

Each with rooves blown away.

More detritus, but life goes on...

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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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There are no allies any more,

No friends, no foes,

No right, no wrong,

No good, no bad;

Just bully boys who'll take you

For everything you had.

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They no longer carry coins.

They have wads of notes to spare,

But their instinct is to throw crumbs,

Or bits of half-eaten sandwiches.

They tell you to perform

One of those cute local dances,

Or to sing ‘Streets of London’,

Or playing a tune on the violin.

Or better still, sit up and beg,

Say how goddam grateful you are,

And hand over anything you’ve got,

Explainin...

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The Sunshine Boys are chatting on the phone;

They claim that they are both concerned with peace.

But one of them is raining down his bombs,

While body counts on both sides still increase.

The other one appears not to remember

Who started this barbaric slice of hell;

He treats the culprit as a valued partner

And seems to have been captured by his spell.

The victims...

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A time will come when we forgive,

Though that time is not yet;

But even when forgiveness comes,

None of us will forget.

We won’t forget the agony,

The sadness and the waste;

We won’t forget the insults hurled

With puerile lack of taste.

We won’t forget our cities wrecked,

Our soldiers blown to bits;

We won’t forget the fearful nights,

The lethal missile h...

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