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 worlds,

Pulverising all before them.

They are the angriest of beasts:

Mud-splattered, rugged, spraying death,

Which is what the generals like.

They have them, so we must have them,

And we must have more and more and….

War’s crass cycle rotates anew,

And blameless men on either side

Are crushed beneath the mammoths’ ride.