Belgrano

Can you hear the curses? I hear them still
dead in the air rolling on the grey high seas,
fluttering, stuttering, up in the cold stony clouds,
frozen like kites in the middle of nowhere.
I hear the silence too, of the boys, the young young boy's
pressed against the bulwarks and the dead eyed iron,
sense their gun metal faces hidden inside the masks
of home spun green wool - skittering eyes peeping
through knitted balaclavas worn as cold comforters
dripping in Atlantic spume.

I can hear the whispers, the trembling pampas whispers
of near men, close men, light shaven, cropped near-to skull men,
some with dark, bull herding eyes , hearts full of Spanish guitar
and pampas whistles and beside them the rich city blond men,
quiet and bookish, alone with their poets and pebble black rosaries
running like the southern tides  through their cold chapped fingers.
All hugger-mugger equaled by forced conscription, circling in silence
within their sea shrouded fears - crammed like live fish quivering in their ancient tin of old victories.

Yes I hear them still, calling out for a distant mother's arms, ripping  
loose their little boy screams that are clear as over head seagulls
yet eight thousand miles away. I can hear their raw primitive panic,
ancient as the whelps of beaten camp fire dogs echoing back
from the steely grey clouds; I see them tearing at the
sea born mist, slicing the strings of their pampas kite curses
with broken bones and shattered skulls, loosing curses that rise to run
above the waves to our shores carrying the lost, little boy simpers
of clamour and death that found  roost in our forgetful hearts.

Yes I still hear the screams, the sea drowned, salt soaked screams,
a cold southern ocean full of drowning young Argentine boy dreams
(pronounced men before their time), those fire soaked screams and I remember how we the civilized danced on their sad lonely deaths in our distant dry victory soaked streets of triumphant,disregard and screamed ;
"Gotcha".

After all, we're not savages. We're English.
And the English are the best at everything.
                                                     ­       (Piggy)
The hovelled huts
Near  school house ditches
Hardly sheltered starving children.
Emaciated, pale and ghastly,
Three million lost.
Exports defined them,
Imports denied them,
The world was told their hunger
Was the wrath of God.
For seven hundred years
Untolled Rachels wept;
Twice as long
As Jews were kept
Enslaved in pagan Egypt.
This was Ireland,
Not Auschwitz.

Beneath the banners of
Labour and Freedom,
Toiled the innocents.
Eyes burning from hot peppers,
Bodies weak and wrecked
From boarding;
Skin separated by flogging
Thousands of Cypriots.

Over soup and sandwiches
A demarcation's drawn,
So Hindus now face Muslims
Seeking their new homes.
Three million displaced
During lunch,
Brain salad served up on a hunch
By a line
Drawn by one man.
This wasn't Treblinka,
But Pakistan.

Millions fenced in labour camps
In what they called  
The Dark Continent.
The torture was horrendous,
With random executions.
Think the worse, you're still not there,
Think ravenous dogs and mutilation,
**** and human degradation.
Eyes gouged out, ears cut off,
This was Kenya,
Not Warsaw.

Sir Winston wore
His crocodile shoes,
Feigning the blues,
While blocking friendly supplies;
Letting three million hungry die.
His callousness was cruelly matched
When delivering Mahatma's epithet:
“Has Gandhi not starved yet?”
This was Bengal,
Not Dachau.

Their ****** count adds up.
Their new policy was errant:
Imprison all the peasants.
It was racist to the Nth degree,
A million desperate detainees
To exile when they're freed.
But half died on their knees
In Malay,
Not Buchenwald.


The Boer War and Apartheid
Were blessed with Royal Assent.
In Amritsar Brits opened fire,
To cut down Innocents.

This isn't just in history,
It's happened all too recently.

Argentina's watery graves
Gurgle from The Belgrano,
Sunk by Royal torpedoes
For a rock of sheep.
Such was the work
Of a band of brothers,
To fly their flag
Over Falkland waters?

There's no denying
The atrocities
Of her maternal
Ferocities.
The Spinners
Wrapped their glories
Furled in Jack's war stories.
The winners
Have detoured their crimes,
Enjoin us denouncing
**** times;
But the sun hasn't set
On Empire fires:
China, India, Kenya, Aden,
Ireland, Africa,
All invaded.
All degraded.
Imperialism is not benign,
The legacy lives on
In Palestine.

Under pretence
Of flag and king,
The English are
Best at everything.

Dear Grandma,
Yesterday on Broadway
I thought I saw your face
front and center on the Times ---
it was Margaret Thatcher, she's passed away!

They say she was hatred;
ruined the British manufacturers,
the miners, and the arts;
forgot the Irish freedom fighters,
watched them die from a distance;
they say she failed the English poor,
even fulfilled the Belgrano's fate...

Grandma, I thought of you in your garden,
picking ripened Early Girls ---
you so resemble Mrs. Thatcher;
what will they say of you when you've gone?
No more than brief obituaries
printed in the weekend papers?
Murmurs at the memorial
during your eulogy?

Although you've wronged me once or twice
I can sympathize with your point of view;
I hope someday they'll forgive Mrs. Thatcher,
as I've forgiven you.