Argy Bargy
Dear Sir,
Why not let the Argentines have one Falkland Isle
and we the other? (Billy Hill aged 6)
Frigates knife the swell, a radio fails,
gulls smudge a radar screen
a jet flies off the air,
Then mistaken Sea-wolves flame,
Who wins the toss beneath this tilting sky?
South Atlantic gales howl their chill reply.
But England expects! Hearts and nerves
contract to kill for Queen and country.
Domestic grief plays out on screens.
The coffins pitch and sway
- Was it for this the clay...?
But mothers bravely bear the blow
and defence committees boost
our confidence. Who will crow
when this comes home to roost?
Though this be method yet there’s madness in’t.
Faith’s the order of the day, sufficient unto which
the disorder thereof. We strafe their dumps,
call bluffs, sail past Patenque; take a fix,
and land our spies, send men to trench the moors
(to make the world a safer place) I doubt if Blix ...
Where’s Kissinger now? I wonder if he ...
Conscripts shivering under shellfire
Justice, we cry, Justice! (this is war,
why should we let them rest?)
Hotfoot on the decks they stand
while Tristram ends his quest.
They’re on a sticky wicket says an admiral (retired);
Oil’s a red herring, says another.
To pay five ducats five, one captain said,
I would not farm it.‘Tis already garrisoned?
Who said they never would defend it?
Shells grunt into peat bogs.
Many stick around and the see-saw dips -
six miles, three mountains now before
we reach the names on miltary maps
where sleepers, in this month of May,
keep their boots on (and some die that way).
War engenders fables, daily life resumes.
Breakers surge across the bay;
farmers gather kelp; two children stray
round ammo dumps and mines
and sappers’ graves on Tumbledown.
The Roaring Forties shred the white flags
- in the va-ha-llee below -
How could we use poor fellows so?
©Terry Hodgson2020
Coming Of Age
As the Cunard Countess moored,
a new day with clear sunlight dawned,
and plumes of peat smoke rose
from the shore of the Malvinas Isles -
or Falklands as we call that outpost
of an empire. Now it has renown
for the landing beach below the town
and village of San Carlos. There remain
two hundred and fifty men and more
(fewer lie in the less-known town,
sixty miles away, of Darwin).
But together Brit and Argentine
number pretty much the same
as the relatives who came
eleven months on in a luxury ship,
courtesy of Cunard with a Bishop,
who, in a quiet hillside ceremony,
emitted, as is customary, words
of comfort: May purifying fire
continue to inspire (and so on)-
followed by Flowers of the Forest
and the bagpipes wailed.
Wearing duffel coats and jeans,
stout shoes, slacks and anoraks
to keep out wind and weather,
holding children very small,
ageing fathers and widows young
embraced each other.
All listened to the Bishop’s words
then wept and sang a muted song,
as funeral bells were rung.
When a boy picked up a bone
the tannoy warning: Danger!
Pick nothing off the ground
shook everyone around - oh,
they’d swept the place but you never know
so the Bishop prayed for all mankind
as though peace might come true
within the drystone, rough pink walls
and on the daisied mound
in the livestock paddock.
All stood outside the graveyard where
priests in hurried finery
spoke Francis Drake’s old prayer
and chains of grieving people
leaned and hugged each other.
It is not the beginning but
the continuation of the same
until it all be throughly finished
which yieldeth the true glory.
Well, it is finished now - at least,
twenty years on we tell their story,
call these Isles the Falklands still,
but whether war yielded true
glory depends on what you
wish the past meant or future will.
Valiant for Truth bequeathed
his sword to men who would
succeed him in his pilgrimage.
He went to his Father and though
with difficulty he got thither
did not repent him of the trouble;
but did the companies amid the rubble,
above the men beneath the grass
or even those who gather,
not one but twenty-one years after,
raise a dissenting voice?
David Tinker found a word to say.
Message from the Task Force
did not conspicuously conform
with the Order of the Day.
©Terry Hodgson2020
Falklands War Forty Years On
If the Navy does not sail,
Lord Heseltine opined,
the government will fall,
and when America said Yes
they left. Today, forty years on,
former sailors meet old soldiers,
old in visage, young in heart,
to speak of hand to hand encounters,
of the Sheffield, Exeter and Belgrano,
and the Vulcan’s new glossed glory.
They recall its flight 8000 miles
to bomb the airstrip of Port Stanley,
forestalling Argentina landing.
And today we have new heroes
from a different invasion.
In twenty, forty years from now,
will Ukraine’s stout defenders
celebrate this war?
Or, like these Falkland veterans,
keep silent forty years?
And how will Russian soldiers
recall their roles, those red
in blood, in flag and shame and lies?
Will Russia talk of glory?
How speak of the despicable,
how justify and on what ground,
the mines that Kiev’s children
tread so carefully around?
©Terry Hodgson2020
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