The Righteous One by Alexander Baron

The Righteous One is one of those poems that just about nails down my own emotions and feelings towards terrorists and their 'ideals'. I've been meaning to post it for some time but have only recently contacted the author for permission to do so which he has kindly given.

The Righteous One

And when they face you with the evidence
So overwhelming it can't be denied,
Hold your tongue, do not say in self-defence
It is for your beliefs you will be tried.

Don't say you did it for your countrymen,
Like all decent folk they spit on your name,
Don't say you did it for your children when
You've seen them cry and hang their heads in shame.

And when they pull the bodies from the wreck
Of what was once a church, a ship or plane,
When of compassion you have not a speck,
Be silent, no one wants you to explain.

Don't take your son aside and say to him:
Blood of my blood, I did this deed for you.
The photographs of severed heads and limbs
That haunt his dreams remind him that's untrue.

And when they lock you up until you rot,
Don't think yourself a martyr to the cause;
The myriad innocents you've bombed and shot
Were victims of murder, not of just wars.

Yet still you justify your bloody spree
Claiming that out of evil will come good,
Just when and how it will we've yet to see,
(Who but a madman would believe it could?)

The perverse, twisted logic of your kind
Is so sick the imagination reels,
That any fanatic could be so blind:
None stoop so low as those with high ideals.

Alexander Baron

The Diameter of the Bomb

I can't remember where I found this poem. It's been in my little quotes file for some time:

The diameter of the bomb was thirty centimeters
and the diameter of its effective range about seven meters,
with four dead and eleven wounded.
And around these, in a larger circle
of pain and time, two hospitals are scattered
and one graveyard. But the young woman
who was buried in the city she came from,
at a distance of more than a hundred kilometers,
enlarges the circle considerably,
and the solitary man mourning her death
at the distant shores of a country far across the sea
includes the entire world in the circle.
And I won’t even mention the crying of orphans
that reaches up to the throne of God and
beyond, making a circle with no end and no God.

Yehuda Amichai (1924-2000) - The Diameter of the Bomb

From Tony to Cherie

It seems increasingly likely that the government will be legislating in some way to the detriment of law abiding replica gun owners in the UK. Responding to the publication of the All Party Parliamentary Group on gun crime report the home office concluded

The report rightly recognises that 'gun laws in the UK are amongst the strongest in the world' but that we cannot be complacent. At the moment, we have a number of tough new legislative measures going through Parliament to deal with both criminal use of firearms and any emerging gun culture. In addition, we are carrying out a comprehensive review of firearms legislation and will use that to consider in detail the views expressed here, particularly in relation to replica, deactivated and air weapons.

Anyhow, I'm trying to cut down on my posting and frothing about the governments attitude to guns and related sports and pastimes because down that route lies madness and it is the primary reason why I gave up my original blogging project. So, hopefully, this will be the last for a while.

From Tony to Cherie

I'll tell you something hun,
That those that use the gun,
Are either hunting pheasants,
Or out there shooting peasants.

What I can't understand,
Is that handguns are banned,
We took them all away,
Yet on the streets they stay.

Another ban I feel,
On guns that are not real,
Will show we really care,
About the peeps out there.

For show is what I mean,
It makes us seem too keen,
These things that failed before,
Are easy to make law.

To catch a crim is hard,
They say so down the yard,
And anyhow the boys,
Want us to ban the toys.

To crush another sport,
Is something I'd have thought,
Would not be far amiss,
To get us out of this.

It matters not to me,
To take their property,
And anyhow my dear,
The peasants have their beer.

Some poetic advice

From one Norman to another:

"They'll drink every hour of the daylight and poach every hour of the dark,
It's the sport not the rabbits they 're after (we've plenty of game in the park).
Don't hang them or cut off their fingers. That's wasteful as well as unkind,
For a hard-bitten, South-country poacher makes the best man-at-arms you can find.

The path

From the Front Rank,
To the Solent.

From the Solent,
To the Samizdat.

From the Samizdat,
To the Edge.

Then Across the Atlantic,
To Lileks.

And back again,
For the England Project.