For Whom the Bell Tolls Read online

  Were you ever a soldier,

  A rifle or machine gun holder,

  Could you strip a Bren and name its parts,

  Were you trained in the battlefield’s dark arts?

  Were you ever in the gunners’ sights,

  Did you fear the sudden, sharp fire-fights

  And the ghostly dawns and thunderous nights?

  And were you, in some trench line, made aware

  By the flickering falling light of a parachute flare

  And the wind-rush of the shot that parts your hair

  Of the edge-of-madness human wreckage there?

  And did you shake to the Serbian mortars, knowing

  The different sounds of incoming and outgoing?

  Did you take the gloomy TriStar to Iraq

  And wonder how much of you would come back?

  And did you reflect on the amputees

  And the ambushes and IEDs

  And green-on-blue fatalities

  And the massacre at Gandamak

  And defeats dressed up as victories

  And the war of the phantom WMDs

  And such mendacities as these?

  And if you did not know and were not there,

  Then how dare you, a laptop bombardier,

  Presume to join the Devil’s chorus for

  Another wasteful, sacrificial war?

  Muammar Gaddafi 1942–2011

  Power’s a narcotic and an elixir,

  Whoever has it won’t relinquish it

  Until his final scene, a swift exit –

  Better by ballot, but by bullet where

  He owes his hold on it to force and fear.

  The father of his people (aren’t they all?)

  For forty years he held them in his thrall,

  They did his bidding but they loved him not.

  He was the author of his own downfall,

  Found hiding in a storm drain, lynched and shot.

  The Green Book of his multilingual ravings

  Can now be pulped and turned to paper shavings;

  We need not mourn his jamahiriya

  Or self-styled ‘state of the masses’,

  Nor the man himself, prince of jackasses

  And planetary pariah.

  War Crimes Tribunal

  In January 2013 I testified in The Hague in the trial of Ratko Mladic, the former commander of the Bosnian Serb Army, who in 1992 ordered his forces to bomb Sarajevo ‘to the edge of madness’.

  The sound of seagulls plays on a loop in the Carlton Beach Hotel,

  I am listed there as a number not a name,

  And a crowd of ghosts is checked in just the same.

  On a screen in the darkened room the scenes from hell

  Unfold of the siege and its victims as if tethered,

  And the guilt that lurks in the great box files

  Of craters, bombs and projectiles

  And high rise ruins, miles on miles:

  No seagulls there but birds of prey unfeathered,

  Hard-eyed and hatred-driven and unforgiving,

  Training their rifles and RPGs

  On a city of flinching refugees.

  Yet once I ran the trench lines among these

  And thought, what a wild way to earn a living,

  But the courtroom newsreels stand as bedrock fact,

  And the edge-of-madness man, in the dock, avoids eye contact.

  Published in the Wenlock Poetry Festival Anthology, April 2013

  War Zones

  If you’re in the front line you live by the minute

  And the skin of your teeth and understand

  When you enter a village with no people in it,

  And no chickens either, it’s no man’s land.

  There are two sounds of mortar rounds

  The soldiers all agree,

  The outgoing is a defiant ‘F*** you!’

  The incoming a scared ‘F*** me!’

  Mission Impossible

  If you should seek the Holy Grail

  Or try and catch a falling star,

  You’re absolutely bound to fail;

  Likewise if you suppose your lover

  Can be transformed to someone other

  As you direct her life anew

  (While she supposes that of you),

  You’re also on a dead end trail,

  For in the end we are who we are

  And we do what we do what we do.

  Terms of Endearment

  I am assertive, you are aggressive,

  I am determined, you are oppressive,

  I am affectionate, you are possessive,

  I am proportionate, you are excessive:

  Love’s skirmishes and battles of attrition

  Tend to be won and lost by definition.

  The Suitcase

  In matters of the heart my life’s a drag:

  My longest love affair was with a bag,

  A war zone suitcase dented scuffed and battered

  Which, once being lost in transit, left me shattered.

  And when it was returned by God’s good grace,

  Of all scenarios that was the best case.

  Starstruck

  In Geneva in October 2011 I introduced an awards ceremony honouring Angelina Jolie for her ten years’ service to UNHCR, the United Nations Refugee Agency.

  I used to think, till I met Angelina,

  The far side of the hill was always greener;

  But since our meeting I can see

  The place where I would rather be

  Is on the same hillside as Ms Jolie.

  Alice

  The difference between Brits and Germans

  Which we should understand

  Is that their alles is in ordnung

  And ours in Wonderland.

  Radio Set

  If you achieve your three score years and ten,

  Stay in ‘Receive’ for most of it and then

  If you’ve learned anything at all from it

  You’ve earned the right (perhaps) to press ‘Transmit’.

  Mightier than the Sword

  When words are out there on their own,

  Just hanging in the air, alone

  Forlorn and solitary,

  They’re nothing like as mighty as the sword,

  And no match for the military;

  But properly deployed, arrayed,

  Well organised and on parade,

  Then words in the right order feel

  So much more potent than cold steel,

  And that’s when we say ‘Praise the Lord

  And pass the dictionary!’

  Limericks

  There once was a man so uxorious

  He offered a future luxurious

  To the girl of his dreams

  But she vetoed his schemes

  And left him frustrated and furious.

  There was a man of Rawalpindi

  Who on a day stormy and windy

  Got lost in the bush

  Of the high Hindu Kush

  Because he spoke Urdu not Hindi.

  There was a man of Salvador

  Whose country was often at war,

  So he thought, how terrific

  To be more Pacific,

  And he set up his home on that shore.

  The Cat

  I have a friend who lives outdoors,

  Then comes inside and purrs and claws

  And curls up on the mat.

  She lives apart and walks alone,

  Is no one else’
s but her own,

  All places are alike to her,

  With eyes that shine like Lucifer

  She’s the companion I prefer

  And my Magnificat.

  The Vulture

  So fallen are we that our culture

  Reflects the values of the vulture;

  Our destiny hangs in a balance

  Decided not by rule of law

  But birds of prey and dogs of war

  And nature red in tooth and claw

  And ministries of the talons.

  George Osborne MP

  I was Independent MP for Tatton from 1997 to 2001. I promised my constituents that I would serve them for one term only. My successor was the Conservative George Osborne, now Chancellor of the Exchequer. I am occasionally reproached for keeping my promise and so helping to launch his career.

  Being naive and new to Parliament

  And not one of its doubting Thomases,

  I thought that MPs, saying what they meant,

  Were honour bound to keep their promises.

  I’d no idea it was their privilege,

  When backed into some awkward situation,

  To redefine a stated, solemn pledge

  As no more than a hopeful aspiration.

  So blame me for my actions in Committee,

  For parliamentary motions that were passed,

  For challenging corruption in the City,

  For late night votes that were or were not cast;

  For being holier-than-thou and pristine,

  For causing great offence to Neil and Christine,

  Routinely failing to put ticks in boxes,

  For voting both for foxhounds and for foxes;

  For being dissident and out-of-kilter,

  A one-man awkward squad and windmill-tilter;

  For speeches that might well stick in the gorge

  Of party loyalists who could determine

  The route to take to end up clad in ermine –

  But don’t you ever dare blame me for George!

  Margaret Thatcher RIP

  They asked if I wished to sign the book of condolence

  Of the Warrior Queen and Lady of Iron and Steel

  And promoter of Tory MPs like Hamilton (Neil).

  In death as in life she divided the nation with violence

  And left it a prey to its appetites, unedified.

  Then I thought of the soldiers and sailors who died,

  And how at the end, for the sake of the look of the news,

  The amputees were placed in the far back pews.

  With the book unsigned, I passed by on the other side.

  Politicians

  My four years as an MP taught me that clever people can be more stupid than stupid people.

  With a despatch box as their prize

  They lace their rhetoric with lies,

  They plot and scheme and strategise,

  They blow their smoke-screens in our eyes,

  They preach, pursue and proselytise

  The party line for ever:

  We need our politicians wise,

  Which ain’t the same as clever.

  Phone Hacking

  Amid the papers’ patriotic noise

  (These were the ones which backed our boys),

  A reptile of a journalist from hell

  Conspired and schemed and basely misconceived

  A plan that when our gallant soldiers fell

  He’d hack into the phones of the bereaved.

  Now here’s the question: true or false,

  That while such men were shameless,

  Their editors in marble halls

  Were absolutely blameless.

  The Acronym

  Most of the TV news I see is rather

  Superficial, weary, stale and flat:

  It’s Comprehensive Rubbish And Palaver,

  And there’s an acronym for that.

  The Drone

  Twinkle twinkle little star

  Shining on us from afar

  Distant, celestial and serene,

  So brilliant and alone,

  We pause to wonder what you are

  And what your radiance may mean,

  Unless you’re just a loitering drone

  And targeted killing machine.

  Aesthetics

  Consider it aesthetically

  The way that warfare goes,

  The missile is the poetry,

  The infantry the prose.

  The Enemy

  I still remember the searchlights

  Like fairy beams on blackout nights,

  The drone of planes from aerodromes,

  Tin signs that warned of Fritz’s bombs

  And how aged eight my fantasy

  Was to destroy his UXB,

  Butterfly bombs in fields and ditches,

  Such dreams of glory were my riches.

  So many years and war zones later

  I sense the dangers so much greater,

  And I have met the enemy

  Who is no longer him but me,

  The anger, hate and animus

  That lurk in every one of us,

  And, baleful as the years that pass,

  I see him in the looking glass.

  Pythagoras

  There once was a native waterway so angular,

  Its course was virtually triangular;

  And the name for this river in common use

  Was the Mighty Flowing Tennessee Hypotenuse.

  The Apache and the Cherokee

  Had such a sense of symmetry

  That when time came for them to choose

  Their partners, squaws or brides,

  They thought that the squaw on the Hypotenuse

  Was equal to the sum of the squaws on the other two sides.

  Clerihews

  The Emperor Nero

  Was a political zero,

  His infamy well-earned

  By fiddling while Rome burned.

  Henry the Navigator

  Was inspiration and creator

  Of charts and maps of great success

  Five hundred years before the GPS.

  Catherine of Aragon

  Was hardly a paragon,

  But she deserved a better life

  Than being Henry VIII’s first wife.

  Oliver Cromwell, Great Protector,

  Threw his weight about in the public sector:

  He said the MPs he expelled by force

  Had no more religion than his horse.

  General Ulysses Grant

  Was a great commandant,

  But his judgements were risky

  When he drank too much whisky.

  Isambard Kingdom Brunel

  Was a genius without parallel,

  But his dreams were realised and made work

  Entirely by other people’s spadework.

  General William (‘Uncle Bill’) Slim

  Caused more grief to the foe than the foe did to him:

  His success was total and complete

  In snatching victory from defeat.

  President Lyndon Baines Johnson

  Had the force of a human monsoon,

  But he got his calculations wrong

  About the Vietcong.

  Michele Obama,

  Having fallen for a charmer,

  Was persuaded to elope

  By his Audacity of Hope.

  Footballer Mario Balotelli

  Never needed a causus belli:


  After each eccentricity

  He asked ‘Why is it always me?’

  Jessica Ennis

  Asked ‘Anyone for tennis?’

  And as there wasn’t she went and won

  The Olympic heptathlon.

  Norway

  When it comes to rating great Norwegians

  There aren’t exactly legions and legions;

  But you know you’re in Norway when for league after league

  You see nothing but statues of Ibsen and Grieg;

  And on every one of them sits a seagull,

  Which shows you that, all things being equal,

  If you’re Norwegian, famous and dead

  You’ll be stuck there for years with a bird on your head,

  And the bird isn’t just admiring the view

  But regularly doing what birds do

  On you.

  Norwegians drink antifreeze or schnapps

  Which causes multiple mishaps:

  And thus the schnapps or antifreeze

  Brings sober Norway to its knees.

  My Mother

  When the old man died she took it personally, as an act of infidelity,

  That he just decamped, disappeared without warning, a shattering stop to their melody.

  Then she worried about money, of which she had more than enough,

  We reckoned she’d be a hundred and forty before she ran out of the stuff.

  Next, she put her things in order. No one ever tried harder

  To cover their tracks. She was a world class discarder.

  And when she went, she left just clothes and shoes

  And an envelope labelled ‘string too short to use’.

  Truth and Falsehood

  My venerable encyclopaedia,

  Grave and august and leather-bound,

  Was friend and guide and storehouse.

  Its errant offspring, multi-media,