Warsaw 1981
Friends, the curfew lifted,
Celebrate a truce
In churches candlelit
This Christmas Eve.
Hands grip the backs of pews,
A congregation kneels,
A prey to fear and hunger.
Who prays to whom?
Who praises what?
What preys on whom?
Numbed by the season,
Polacks for slaughter
They shamble through the snow,
Provide the meat this Christmas,
Feeding on themselves,
Shut off, shut in -
Though some square shoulders,
Speak to the soldiery,
Manage momentary smiles.
Power feeds itself
More fully than the people.
Country boys in uniform,
Crop-full of butcher’s meat,
Slouch at street corners,
Finger their guns.
Authority promotes
An uninformed disunity
And the world is conned.
But a thousand underground,
Behind mined entrances,
Provide the General
With food for thought.
A man on hunger-strike
Defies the takers over,
And the world waits.
Whatever is to overtake
The undertakers?
No caviare for the general,
Sliding on the wafer-thin ice
Of the communion wine.
©Terry Hodgson2020
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