Long years ago, we made a tryst with destiny and now the time comes when we shall redeem our pledge… At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom. – Jawaharlal Nehru Indian Declaration of Independence, on eve of independence, August 15 1947. In celebration of the 70th anniversary of Indian…
“I was so rushed I had not time to go into the details,” – Cyril Ratcliffe. The political leaders of the independence movement in British India were unable to agree on a united post-colonial future. The result was a plan for a territorial division. The task was huge and fraught with difficulties. The consequences were traumatic. August 15th marks the…
MCMXIV Those long uneven lines Standing as patiently As if they were stretched outside The Oval or Villa Park, The crowns of hats, the sun On moustached archaic faces Grinning as if it were all An August Bank Holiday lark; And the shut shops, the bleached Established names on the sunblinds, The farthings and sovereigns, And dark-clothed children at play…
The Manumit School was an experimental Christian socialist boarding school in Pawling, NY. and later Bristol, Pennsylvania. Manumit means freedom and release from slavery and this was a school with a clear mission. It was racially integrated, religiously tolerant and worked “toward a world order based upon justice and co-operation, in which the individual may find freedom.” It was founded in…
Home no one leaves home unless home is the mouth of a shark you only run for the border when you see the whole city running as well your neighbors running faster than you breath bloody in their throats the boy you went to school with who kissed you dizzy behind the old tin factory is holding a gun bigger…
Forget the mother of all bombs and the father of all mankind – here is the ultimate parent of all apologies. Just look at this great list as the poet slyly moves from the serious to the playful, from the abstract to the mundane, from the burden to the lightweight. It’s an insistence on going on living and enjoying small…
Poltroon – the very word is like a … what? a.) A North American mammal of the raccoon family known for its habit of rooting for grubs in the undergrowth of deciduous forests b.) A metal or earthenware pot typically having a funnel-shaped top, often kept under the bed c.) An abject or contemptible coward, lacking courage; ignobly timid and faint-hearted. The Poltroon…
Two Lorries It’s raining on black coal and warm wet ashes. There are tyre-marks in the yard, Agnew’s old lorry Has all its cribs down and Agnew the coalman With his Belfast accent’s sweet-talking my mother. Would she ever go to a film in Magherafelt? But it’s raining and he still has half the load To deliver farther on. This…
An aubade is a poem or piece of music appropriate to the dawn or early morning. By the 1930’s it was clear that the war that was supposed to end all wars was not going to. MacNeice wrote this in 1934 and it well expresses a sense of impending doom. Not the dawn of a bright new era of hope and fresh…
In light of decision-making by executive order and the White House signing ceremonies that seem to exude smug gloating – a poem and pictures. Decisions, signings, authorizations, treaties, orders have consequences. The hand that signed the paper The hand that signed the paper felled a city; Five sovereign fingers taxed the breath, Doubled the globe of dead and halved a…
On the Fifth Day the scientists who studied the rivers were forbidden to speak or to study the rivers. The scientists who studied the air were told not to speak of the air, and the ones who worked for the farmers were silenced, and the ones who worked for the bees. Someone, from deep in the Badlands, began posting facts.…
A Polished Performance Citizens of the polished capital Sigh for the towns up country, And their innocent simplicity. People in the towns up country Applaud the unpolished innocence Of the distant villages. Dwellers in the distant villages Speak of a simple unspoilt girl, Living alone, deep in the bush. Deep in the bush we found her, Large and innocent of…
Power by Audre Lorde The difference between poetry and rhetoric is being ready to kill yourself instead of your children. I am trapped on a desert of raw gunshot wounds and a dead child dragging his shattered black face off the edge of my sleep blood from his punctured cheeks and shoulders is the only liquid for miles and my…
The simplest poems can be amongst the most profound. On the Steps of the Jefferson Memorial We invent our gods the way the Greeks did, in our own image—but magnified. Athena, the very mother of wisdom, squabbled with Poseidon like any human sibling until their furious tempers made the sea writhe. Zeus wore a crown of lightning bolts one minute,…
Here is a scene of violence and inhumanity that feels torn from the front page of the newspaper or a report on the latest immigration raid outrage. But this is the kind of news that stays news because it keeps happening. Bent to the Earth They had hit Ruben with the high beams, had blinded him so that the van…