For Whom the Bell Tolls Read online

  Ratko Mladic

  General Ratko Mladic, former commander of the Bosnian Serb Army, was indicted by the War Crimes Tribunal in 1996. He was arrested in Northern Serbia on 26 May 2011 and extradited to The Hague to face trial on charges relating to the siege of Sarajevo and the Srebrenica massacre.

  We knew his scowl, his cold contempt, his swagger,

  This Balkan incarnation of Macbeth;

  A trail of bloodshed stained the path he trod

  From Srebrenica to Bosanski Brod.

  He too was brave and he too dealt in death.

  He had a soldier’s hand upon the dagger,

  Or in this case the execution squad,

  For which he now must answer before God,

  As God in mercy or in wrath disposeth,

  And to the Court, until his dying breath.

  The Court observes the processes of law,

  Consideration of the rules of war

  And all protections due to the accused;

  Such rights as were notoriously refused

  To victims of his deadliest attack:

  All they got was a bullet in the back.

  Arkan

  The Serbian warlord Zeljko Raznatovic, also known as Arkan, was assassinated in Belgrade on 15 December 2000. Most Croats are Roman Catholics. During the Croatian war the Serbs dismantled their churches in both Petrinja and Erdut, which was Arkan’s headquarters.

  Here was a man who lived not by the sword

  But rather by the gun and hand grenade;

  He was a lethal gangster and warlord

  Who owned an ice cream parlour in Belgrade.

  I knew him well: and over the ice cream

  He would outline his people’s destiny,

  Their history, their legend and their dream,

  One nation from the Danube to the sea.

  He hated Croats and he hated Turks

  (His word for Muslims), and he drew up lists

  Of Tito’s followers and all their works,

  For most of all he hated Communists.

  By force majeure he managed to recruit

  An army called the Tigers, widely feared,

  Based in the Croatian village of Erdut,

  From which the church mysteriously disappeared.

  He seized a mascot from the Belgrade Zoo,

  A tiger cub his soldiers idolised;

  The beast proved hard to handle – his men too,

  Who pillaged, looted, killed and terrorised

  Through two republics, Bosnia and Croatia;

  Their war of conquest knew no boundaries,

  It seemed they specialised in the erasure

  Not just of lives but of identities.

  Under his real name of Raznatovic

  He was of course indicted by the Court,

  But died before the lawyers worked out which

  Of many war crimes charges should be brought.

  His end, alas, was very far from gentle,

  Unloved, unmourned, uncherished and unlit,

  Gunned down inside the Intercontinental:

  Who lives by the grenade will die by it.

  White Suits

  They had no meaning ethical or moral

  But helped to keep me safe; while on a mission

  To tell the story of some distant quarrel

  I comforted myself with superstition.

  So in the Balkans twenty years ago

  The snipers and the gunners aimed and missed.

  I was a winter warfare specialist,

  And much the best protected journalist:

  The suits were also camouflage in snow.

  War Plugs

  The danger level was high and rising higher,

  We dealt with mortars, snipers, gangs of thugs;

  What vexed me most was not incoming fire

  But the near total absence of bath plugs.

  Washbasins, baths and sinks – it seemed symbolic

  Of a society in disarray:

  Wherever we would go some plugaholic

  Had nicked the plugs and taken them away.

  I solved the problem rather well, I think;

  I hit upon a plug (one size fits all)

  That could adapt to any war zone sink.

  My prized possession was a soft squash ball.

  Wildlife

  The Sloth

  One day beneath a tree in Costa Rica

  I had my special moment of Eureka.

  I saw a creature upside down therein,

  And thought, this could be either or be both:

  The sloth is named for the deadly sin,

  Or the deadly sin for the sloth.

  The Egret

  It is to me a cause of deepest regret

  That we, unlike the nimble-footed egret,

  Should plod the earth with mortal tread

  Heavy enough to wake the dead;

  I only wish we knew the egret’s secret.

  The Seagull

  Since seagulls are so common everywhere,

  You might think of them as a band of brothers,

  But there’s a pecking order in the air:

  It seems that some are more seagull than others.

  Bird’s Nest

  The cat looked up at the bird in its nest,

  The bird looked down at the cat:

  Somewhere we must have sinned and erred,

  For ours is the plight and the perch of the bird,

  And we too face the deadliest

  Of threats to life and habitat,

  And the fate, like the bird’s, of coming off second best.

  We are beset by tooth and claw,

  Too well aware of what they’re for

  And who they’re aiming at.

  The Canaries

  These are not birds but footballers. I have been a lifelong supporter of Norwich City. Its saviour and majority shareholder Delia Smith began her TV career, as I did, with the BBC in Norwich. In 2011 the Canaries won promotion from the Championship and returned to their rightful place in the Premier League.

  The nerves of Norwich fans could not be steelier;

  They’ve had to be, through every up and down,

  Especially a clash with Ipswich Town.

  Just once we had a mighty brush with fame,

  When we returned triumphant from Bavaria;

  But mostly, missing sitters in the area,

  We struggled in mid-table. Yet through Delia

  (OK, you waited for that rhyme

  But got it – didn’t you? – in time)

  We have the best cuisine in all the game;

  And like one of her soufflés, newly risen,

  We’re now back in the Premier Division.

  Such is her hold on all of our supporters,

  That they remained obedient to her orders

  When she explored a well-remembered avenue

  With the immortal war cry ‘Let’s be ’aving you!’

  Giuseppe Verdi

  He wrote his operas to great acclaim,

  Grand marches, overtures, La Traviata,

  But still I wonder what lies in a name:

  Would his successes have been quite the same,

  And he so sovereign on the music scene,

  If Bermondsey had been his alma mater,

  And he’d been one of us, just plain Joe Green?

  Ode to Marmite

  ‘I don’t think that I’ll ever write a poem as lovely as Marmite’

  Advertisement on a jar of Marmite

  Dark and pungent, dense and glutinous,


  Either we love you dearly or are mutinous.

  While some of us will swear allegiance

  To your mysterious ingredients,

  Others will nervously recoil

  From your resemblance to slick-oil,

  And foreigners so little understand you,

  The dreadful Danes have actually banned you!

  But lovelier than a poem? There I think

  You push comparatives a bit too far.

  And yet you save us from the demon drink,

  And the intoxications of a bar,

  When we decide to have another jar.

  On Entering Parliament

  My four years as an MP, from 1997 to 2001, were the most disappointing and even shocking of my life, in terms of the discrepancy between what I hoped for in the House of Commons and what I found there.

  When first I walked in past the grand statues,

  I thought, now here’s a lesson I can use

  About the values of democracy;

  This is its beating heart and pantheon.

  But then I went to my first PMQs

  And wondered, what’s this feeble, lame excuse

  For firing endless volleys of abuse,

  What is this waste of space, this travesty?

  And such a shameful way to carry on;

  If that’s the best that Parliament can do,

  I should have bought a ticket to the zoo.

  The Backbencher

  No need to whip the poor backbencher

  With threats of punishment or censure,

  For seeing what the man will do

  Unwhipped, there is no reason to.

  Requiem

  Indifferent to the people’s warning,

  The parties headed for a fall,

  Tory, Labour and Lib Dem.

  At the going down of the sun and in the morning,

  We will of course remember them,

  But miss them not at all.

  Bought and Sold

  One day in the House of Commons I saw a well-respected MP, on an issue where he could influence others, vote against his conscience and in support of his party. He was rewarded with a peerage.

  He seemed a decent sort, upright and staid,

  And frugal too: no duck house and no moat,

  By no means an expenses renegade,

  His reputation was his stock in trade,

  And yet I swear I saw him sell his vote.

  In a division where he carried weight

  He was the Whips’ appointed candidate

  To lead the way with deeds rather than words.

  And so he voted to capitulate

  And now he sits in ermine in the Lords.

  Sleaze Then and Now

  It almost seemed an age of innocence

  Back then: the merest handful of MPs,

  Some of them charlatans and others fools,

  Took cash for questions, cheated, cooked the books,

  And when these peccadilloes became known,

  They were not much more than a public joke.

  But now the Members thrive at our expense,

  Surfing a tide of larceny and sleaze,

  Acting of course within their precious rules;

  We also know that half of them are crooks.

  The scandal is entirely home-grown;

  Our whole democracy’s gone up in smoke.

  This is a time for public penitence:

  They will no longer pilfer as they please.

  The ballot box contains our real crown jewels.

  We shall prevail – it’s harder than it looks,

  Until we understand we’re not alone,

  And we can fix the system that they broke.

  Swindlers’ List

  I wish I had my own duck house,

  Redacted and anonymous,

  A shaded pool where ducks could float,

  A pond, a river or a moat,

  A place unto the manor born

  Where moles would not uproot the lawn.

  I was not born to privilege,

  But loitered at the water’s edge

  And played the Honourable Member

  From January to December.

  I wish to thank the voters’ sense

  For choosing me at their expense;

  On their behalf I did my best,

  Including things they never guessed.

  Though my accomplishments were zero,

  In fiddling I was next to Nero;

  I was a self-philanthropist,

  Master of the John Lewis list;

  I had a profitable innings

  And duly pocketed the winnings,

  The subsidies, the perks, the pay,

  The petty cash, the ACA,

  The Tudor beams, the chandeliers,

  The bills for swimming pool repairs,

  The hanging plants, the trouser press;

  Nothing exceeded like excess:

  The whirlpool bath, the horse manure,

  Whiter than white, purer than pure.

  And so it was until, alas,

  The MPs’ scandals came to pass.

  I was your Honourable Friend,

  A pity that it had to end.

  And then to avoid the sneers of Mr Paxman

  I wrote a cheque and sent it to the taxman.

  Sonnet: The People’s Bell Tower

  In discharge of their parliamentary duties,

  And incidentally the pursuit of power,

  Our MPs perpetrated some real beauties.

  The hanging baskets, duck house and bell tower:

  Wodehouse, you should be living at this hour

  (Did Blandings Castle also have a moat?).

  Forgive the idiom, but what a shower!

  And all elected on the people’s vote.

  They may have done some service now and then,

  But took us for a ride and robbed us rotten;

  Surely we shall not be deceived again,

  Nor will their misdemeanours be forgotten.

  Henceforth let no man ever have the nerve

  To say we get the Members we deserve.

  Regrets

  Being an Honourable Member for four years,

  I mourn the opportunities I lost

  To install stable lights and chandeliers,

  And tennis courts, complete with their repairs,

  To lay a Wilton carpet on the stairs,

  To add some Louis Quatorze dining chairs,

  Accountants’ fees for trading stocks and shares,

  And wreaths for the Remembrance Sunday prayers,

  Plus free pork pies and crisps and chocolate squares,

  To pay all mortgages, debts and arrears,

  Not at my own, but someone else’s cost.

  Instead of representing people’s wills,

  I could have built up an impressive stash,

  Hundreds a month in supermarket bills

  And generous amounts of petty cash.

  My great regret, if anyone should ask it,

  The most conspicuous error that I made,

  Was buying a millennium hanging basket:

  Its colours were of every hue and shade,

  Red, blue and yellow were all in the mix,

  A symbol, or a sort of visual aid

  For new and more harmonious politics.

  It then adorned my house for all that summer.

  How could I know the taxpayer would have paid

  For that, as for the mole traps of John Gummer?

  Behind B
ars

  David Chaytor, former Labour MP for Bury North, was convicted of fraud and imprisoned in January 2011. Three other ex-MPs, Eric Illsley, Jim Devine and Elliot Morley, followed him.

  And so at last the prison door

  Slams shut behind an ex-MP

  Of dubious reputation.

  We have to ask how many more

  Who used to keep his company

  Deserve his destination.

  Brief Encounter

  Somewhere remote and safe, out in the sticks,

  Amid a photo op of troops and tanks,

  A politician walked along the ranks,

  Expressing his condolences and thanks.

  A soldier threw some words into the mix:

  ‘Sir, how much do you know of soldiering?’

  ‘Not much,’ he said, ‘in fact, hardly a thing,

  But how much do you know of politics?’

  ‘Not much again’ – he looked him in the eyes:

  ‘Except, I’m rather good at telling lies.’

  Limerick (1): WMD

  There once was a great fantasist

  Who published a dossier or list

  Of a whole armoury

  Of WMD,

  Which were weapons that didn’t exist.

  Limerick (2): IDS

  Ian Duncan Smith

  Seems not to have asked himself if

  When the war party beckoned,

  Led by George Bush the Second,

  He was shafting his own kin and kith.

  Clerihew

  Prime Minister Anthony Lynton Blair

  By messianic zeal and force of will

  Marched the Queen’s soldiers up the hill

  And then he left them there.

  Due Process

  The soldier, being asked to draw his sword,

  Might well have left it sheathed and wondered why;

  The war was difficult to justify,