By Clayton Goodwin
One evening back in 1998, I was sitting in a foreign hotel waiting to return home in the morning and switched boredly between the channels offered by the television. It was at the time that President Clinton ordered the bombing of a Middle East location because – it was said – to deflect attention from the scandal of his alleged affair with Monica Lewinsky.
It could have been today
“We have no quarrel with this people”.
It is with sorrow that we bring you
Each moment in the agony
Of their country’s tragedy.
Rejoice !
The guns, the bombs, the killing
From our brave lads
To whom we gave the shilling
To blast to hell for our amusement
A tyrant who is not content
To leave world power
To those of good intention
With right to arms of our invention.
Bullets fly
Children die
Bombs fall
Old folk crawl
In death and mutilation
To meet the debit of their nation.
Broadcasters bluster
The generals fluster
To find the words to justify
Why these poor souls must surely die.
Their containment is our entertainment.
The news at noon
Is much too soon
To watch the aftermath of hell.
The news at eight
Has come too late
To listen to politicians tell
What they have done –
What they had to do –
In the name of us …
That’s me and you.
Why don’t they say:
“We have had our way
And battered down
Some foreign clown”.
Do not wrap it in a moral
About folk with whom
We have no quarrel.
The tracers flash
And buildings crash.
Total up the score –
A hundred ?
More ?
Players of an unknown name
In this television game.
*
Sick with everything we’ve seen
I press the switch –
Another screen.
Pope, archbishop, rabbi, statesmen speak of the need for harmony and peace:
That isn’t the platitude which I seek until this warfare and the terror cease”.
*
Crossing by the satellite
We drop in on a boxing fight
Where two strong men inflict much pain
With punches to the heart and brain.
*
And yet at just a flick away
We find ourselves on the wedding-day
For a happy, smiling pair
Who do not seem to have a care
Except that it all stays fine,
And pledge their troth of Love Divine.
*
Newsflash – newsflash
What is next ?
Newsflash on the teletext.
The water’s risen
Floods abound
And have covered holy ground
Swamping churches
Shops and crannies
With inconvenience to kids and grannies.
Our kids
Our grannies …
I must add …
That is why it so truly sad.
But Spurs have scored !
And Arsenal too !!
The Queen has gone to Whipsnade Zoo
To view a species that was about to die.
It is enough to make you cry.
I am thus relieved to see
Symbols of real tragedy …
Our cricketers have failed to impress …
*
Here I must once more digress
And turn the knob
Back to the job
Performed in professional, expert fashion
To stir our hearts in patriotic passion.
Our airmen are all safely back:
Their spokesmen praise the Union Jack.
You would not believe our planes and tanks
Played second fiddle to the Yanks.
And in Europe – what are the views
As shown on television news ?
*
In a room that’s very grubby
A grunting trucker much too tubby –
As seen here on German cable –
Shags a Thai girl on the table.
*
And in Rome
The civilised nations’ home
Bored housewives strip
To make men come.
*
In Belgium, Paris
And in Spain
Our world, its joy and pain
Has become a parlour game.
*
Let us now see
What is on the BBC.
A natural history programme shows
What each of us already knows
That for their life all creatures need
To fight, to fornicate and feed.
It’s hard to watch the refugees
Come here upon their bended knees
To beg of us a charity.
Haven’t they heard the homily
That charity
Begins at home ?
“Go back whence you have come”.
“We are not blind to their harsh plight.
Yet arriving here gives them no right
To share in that they have not earned
While our own dispossessed are spurned”.
I have heard it said
About the Aztec dead
That those who died
In righteous cause
Went to the sky
To travel in eternity
With their chosen deity.
For which in holy duty
They gave the gods a booty
Of human lives
The beating hearts
And cast aside the other parts.
What is our Moloch
Who requires
Such a toll
On our desires
For so much slaying
Of this sort
To give the world
A news report ?
*
At least on the commercial show
Advertisements may come and go
To break the monotony
Of this dull cacophony
In stiff-faced forbearing
Which for us is now too wearing.
“We have no quarrel with these folk” –
That has become a woeful joke.
Hitler, Robespierre, Attila the Hun
Didn’t say they killed for fun.
They used the same reluctant words
Before unsheathing bloody swords
And later sought to justify
Why the innocent also had to die.
So to bed:
That’s what the diarist Samuel said.
And I would dare to guess as much
He had no quarrel with the Dutch –
Yet three times we were at war
As he noted down each whore
With whom he’d slept
Or wished he had
Which makes it all the more so sad
That we do not seem to learn
As we watch the sick-wards burn.
Tomorrow is another day.
What is there then for our further education.
You do not have to stay
With this jingoistic situation.
There are films
The ancient tales
Of battles fought
And victories won.
The stuff to cheer red-blooded males
With exploits that were really fun.
We stood alone
We won the War.
In childhood
That is all we saw.
Let other nations be ever thankful
Humble
Contrite and
Grateful
We saved the world
For their enjoyment
From a parlous
Predicament.
*
Hail to the Chief !
The champion of our own belief !
In years ago we fought
I hear
The War of seaman Jenkins’ ear
Now war-causes are more silly
(“Like a presidential willy ?”)
The lives of strangers rest upon the word
“The pen-is mightier than the sword”.
*
Good evening
Here is news from
Other stations overseas:
We have won at last the series
Of Rugby Union football matches
And in the most recent of despatches
Learn that a thousand more have died
In the war which we described.
Our leaders did not want it so
But these poor bastards had to go.
**********
The boxers in the bloody scrape
The Thai girl (though it was really rape)
The Spanish game-show
And Roman wankers
Asylum-seekers
Television’s bankers
Creatures of the land, air and sea
Dictators’ schemes
Cruel legacies
The bride
The groom
Her Majesty
The floods
Our thoughts on human history
The seaman’s war
The war-chief’s semen
The tyrant of the desert and
The victims in his luckless land
Have to our just delight
Given entertainment for tonight.