A cold coming we had of it.
T. S. Eliot, Journey of the Magi
I saw the charred Iraqi lean
towards me from bomb-blasted screen,
his windscreen wiper like a pen
ready to write down thoughts for men,[1]
his windscreen wiper like a quill
he’s reaching for to make his will.
I saw the charred Iraqi lean
like someone made of Plasticine
as though he’d stopped to ask the way
and this is what I heard him say:
«Don’t be afraid I’ve picked on you
for this exclusive interview.[2]
Isn’t it your sort of poet’s task
to find words for this frightening mask?
If that gadget that you’ve got records
words from such scorched vocal chords,
press RECORD before some dog
devours me mid-monologue».
So I held the shaking microphone
closer to the crumbling bone:
«I read the news of three wise men
who left their sperm in nitrogen,
three foes of ours, three wise Marines[3]
with sample flasks and magazines,
three wise soldiers from Seattle
who banked their sperm before the battle.
Did No. 1 say: God be thanked
I’ve got my precious semen banked.
And No. 2: O praise the Lord
my last best shot is safely stored.
And No. 3: Praise be to God
I left my wife my frozen wad?
So if their fate was to be gassed[4]
at least they thought their name would last,[5]
and though cold corpses in Kuwait
they could by proxy procreate.[6]
Excuse a skull half roast, half bone
for using such a scornful tone.
It may seem out of all proportion
but I wish I’d taken their precaution.
They seemed the masters of their fate
with wisely jarred ejaculate.
Was it a propaganda coup
to make us think they’d cracked death too,
disinformation to defeat us
with no post-mortem millilitres?
Symbolic billions in reserve
made me, for one, lose heart and nerve.
On Saddam’s pay we can’t afford
to go and get our semen stored.
Sad to say that such high tech’s
uncommon here. We’re stuck with sex.
If you can conjure up and stretch
your imagination (and not retch)
the image of me beside my wife
closely clasped creating life…»
(I let the unfleshed skull unfold
a story I’d been already told,
and idly tried to calculate
the content of ejaculate:
the sperm in one ejaculation
equals the whole Iraqi nation
times, roughly, let’s say, 12.5
though that. 5’s not now alive.
Let’s say the sperms were an amount
so many times the body count,
2,500 times at least
(but let’s wait till the toll’s released!)
Whichever way Death seems outflanked
by one tube of cold bloblings banked.
Poor bloblings, maybe you’ve been blessed
with, of all fates possible, the best
according to Sophocles i.e.
«the best of fates is not to be»
a philosophy that’s maybe bleak
for any but an ancient Greek
but difficult these days to escape
when spoken to by such a shape.
When you see men brought to such states
who wouldn’t want that «best of fates»
or in the world of Cruise and Scud
not go kryonic if he could,
spared the normal human doom
of having made it through the womb?)
He heard my thoughts and stopped the spool
«I never thought life futile, fool!
Though all Hell began to drop
I never wanted life to stop.
I was filled with such a yearning
to stay in life as I was burning,
such a longing to be beside
my wife in bed before I died,
and, most, to have engendered there
a child untouched by war’s despair.
So press RECORD! I want to reach
the warring nations with my speech.
Don’t look away! I know it’s hard
to keep regarding one so charred,[7]
so disfigured by unfriendly fire
and think it once burned with desire.
Though fire has flayed off half my features
they once were like my fellow creatures»,
till some screen-gazing[8] crop-haired boy
from Iowa or Illinois,
equipped by ingenious technophile
put paid to my paternal smile
and made the face you see today
an armature half-patched with clay,
an icon framed, a looking glass
for devotees of “kicking ass”,[9]
a mirror that returns the gaze
of victors on their victory days
and in the end stares out the watcher
who ducks behind his headline: GOTCHA![10]
or behind the flag-bedecked page I
of the true to bold-type-setting «SUN»![11]
I doubt victorious Greeks let Hector
join their feast as spoiling spectre,
and who’d want to sour the children’s joy
in Iowa or Illinois
or ageing mothers overjoyed
to find their babies weren’t destroyed ?
But cabs beflagged with « SUN» front pages
don’t help peace in future ages.
Stars and Stripes in sticky paws
may sow the seeds for future wars.
Each Union Jack the kids now wave
may lead them later to the grave.
But praise the Lord and raise the banner
(excuse a skull’s sarcastic manner!)
Desert Rat [12] and Desert Stormer [13]
without scars and (maybe) trauma,
the semen-bankers are all back
to sire their children in their sack.
With seed sown straight from the sower
dump second-hand spermatozoa![14]
Lie that you saw me and I smiled
to see the soldier hug his child.
Lie and pretend that I excuse
my bombing by B52S,
pretend I pardon and forgive
that they still do and I don’t live,
pretend they have the burnt man’s blessing
and then, maybe. I’m spared confessing
that only fire burnt out the shame
of things I’d done in Saddam’s name,
the deaths, the torture and the plunder
the black clouds all of us are under.
Say that I’m smiling and excuse
the Scuds we launched against the Jews.[15]
Pretend I’ve got the imagination
to see the world beyond one nation.
That’s your job, poet, to pretend
I want my foe to be my friend.
It’s easier to find such words
for this dumb mask like baked dogturds.
So lie and say the charred man smiled
to see the soldier hug his child.
This gaping rictus once made glad
a few old hearts back in Baghdad,
hearts growing older by the minute
as each truck comes without me in it.
I’ve met you though, and had my say
which you’ve got taped. Now go away».
I gazed at him and he gazed back
staring right through me to Iraq.[16]
Facing the way the charred man faced
I saw the frozen phial of waste,
a test-tube frozen in the dark,
crib and Kaaba [17], sacred Ark [18],
a pilgrimage of Cross and Crescent [19]
the chilled suspension of the Present.
Rainbows seven shades of black
curved from Kuwait back to Iraq,[20]
and instead of gold the frozen crock’s
crammed with Mankind on the rocks,
the congealed geni who won’t thaw
until the World renounces War,
cold spunk meticulously jarred
never to be charrer or the charred,
a bottled Bethlehem of this come –
curdling Cruise/Scud-cursed millennium.
I went. I pressed REWIND and PLAY
and I heard the charred man say:
T. S. Eliot, Journey of the Magi
I saw the charred Iraqi lean
towards me from bomb-blasted screen,
his windscreen wiper like a pen
ready to write down thoughts for men,[1]
his windscreen wiper like a quill
he’s reaching for to make his will.
I saw the charred Iraqi lean
like someone made of Plasticine
as though he’d stopped to ask the way
and this is what I heard him say:
«Don’t be afraid I’ve picked on you
for this exclusive interview.[2]
Isn’t it your sort of poet’s task
to find words for this frightening mask?
If that gadget that you’ve got records
words from such scorched vocal chords,
press RECORD before some dog
devours me mid-monologue».
So I held the shaking microphone
closer to the crumbling bone:
«I read the news of three wise men
who left their sperm in nitrogen,
three foes of ours, three wise Marines[3]
with sample flasks and magazines,
three wise soldiers from Seattle
who banked their sperm before the battle.
Did No. 1 say: God be thanked
I’ve got my precious semen banked.
And No. 2: O praise the Lord
my last best shot is safely stored.
And No. 3: Praise be to God
I left my wife my frozen wad?
So if their fate was to be gassed[4]
at least they thought their name would last,[5]
and though cold corpses in Kuwait
they could by proxy procreate.[6]
Excuse a skull half roast, half bone
for using such a scornful tone.
It may seem out of all proportion
but I wish I’d taken their precaution.
They seemed the masters of their fate
with wisely jarred ejaculate.
Was it a propaganda coup
to make us think they’d cracked death too,
disinformation to defeat us
with no post-mortem millilitres?
Symbolic billions in reserve
made me, for one, lose heart and nerve.
On Saddam’s pay we can’t afford
to go and get our semen stored.
Sad to say that such high tech’s
uncommon here. We’re stuck with sex.
If you can conjure up and stretch
your imagination (and not retch)
the image of me beside my wife
closely clasped creating life…»
(I let the unfleshed skull unfold
a story I’d been already told,
and idly tried to calculate
the content of ejaculate:
the sperm in one ejaculation
equals the whole Iraqi nation
times, roughly, let’s say, 12.5
though that. 5’s not now alive.
Let’s say the sperms were an amount
so many times the body count,
2,500 times at least
(but let’s wait till the toll’s released!)
Whichever way Death seems outflanked
by one tube of cold bloblings banked.
Poor bloblings, maybe you’ve been blessed
with, of all fates possible, the best
according to Sophocles i.e.
«the best of fates is not to be»
a philosophy that’s maybe bleak
for any but an ancient Greek
but difficult these days to escape
when spoken to by such a shape.
When you see men brought to such states
who wouldn’t want that «best of fates»
or in the world of Cruise and Scud
not go kryonic if he could,
spared the normal human doom
of having made it through the womb?)
He heard my thoughts and stopped the spool
«I never thought life futile, fool!
Though all Hell began to drop
I never wanted life to stop.
I was filled with such a yearning
to stay in life as I was burning,
such a longing to be beside
my wife in bed before I died,
and, most, to have engendered there
a child untouched by war’s despair.
So press RECORD! I want to reach
the warring nations with my speech.
Don’t look away! I know it’s hard
to keep regarding one so charred,[7]
so disfigured by unfriendly fire
and think it once burned with desire.
Though fire has flayed off half my features
they once were like my fellow creatures»,
till some screen-gazing[8] crop-haired boy
from Iowa or Illinois,
equipped by ingenious technophile
put paid to my paternal smile
and made the face you see today
an armature half-patched with clay,
an icon framed, a looking glass
for devotees of “kicking ass”,[9]
a mirror that returns the gaze
of victors on their victory days
and in the end stares out the watcher
who ducks behind his headline: GOTCHA![10]
or behind the flag-bedecked page I
of the true to bold-type-setting «SUN»![11]
I doubt victorious Greeks let Hector
join their feast as spoiling spectre,
and who’d want to sour the children’s joy
in Iowa or Illinois
or ageing mothers overjoyed
to find their babies weren’t destroyed ?
But cabs beflagged with « SUN» front pages
don’t help peace in future ages.
Stars and Stripes in sticky paws
may sow the seeds for future wars.
Each Union Jack the kids now wave
may lead them later to the grave.
But praise the Lord and raise the banner
(excuse a skull’s sarcastic manner!)
Desert Rat [12] and Desert Stormer [13]
without scars and (maybe) trauma,
the semen-bankers are all back
to sire their children in their sack.
With seed sown straight from the sower
dump second-hand spermatozoa![14]
Lie that you saw me and I smiled
to see the soldier hug his child.
Lie and pretend that I excuse
my bombing by B52S,
pretend I pardon and forgive
that they still do and I don’t live,
pretend they have the burnt man’s blessing
and then, maybe. I’m spared confessing
that only fire burnt out the shame
of things I’d done in Saddam’s name,
the deaths, the torture and the plunder
the black clouds all of us are under.
Say that I’m smiling and excuse
the Scuds we launched against the Jews.[15]
Pretend I’ve got the imagination
to see the world beyond one nation.
That’s your job, poet, to pretend
I want my foe to be my friend.
It’s easier to find such words
for this dumb mask like baked dogturds.
So lie and say the charred man smiled
to see the soldier hug his child.
This gaping rictus once made glad
a few old hearts back in Baghdad,
hearts growing older by the minute
as each truck comes without me in it.
I’ve met you though, and had my say
which you’ve got taped. Now go away».
I gazed at him and he gazed back
staring right through me to Iraq.[16]
Facing the way the charred man faced
I saw the frozen phial of waste,
a test-tube frozen in the dark,
crib and Kaaba [17], sacred Ark [18],
a pilgrimage of Cross and Crescent [19]
the chilled suspension of the Present.
Rainbows seven shades of black
curved from Kuwait back to Iraq,[20]
and instead of gold the frozen crock’s
crammed with Mankind on the rocks,
the congealed geni who won’t thaw
until the World renounces War,
cold spunk meticulously jarred
never to be charrer or the charred,
a bottled Bethlehem of this come –
curdling Cruise/Scud-cursed millennium.
I went. I pressed REWIND and PLAY
and I heard the charred man say:
×
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[1] The charred Iraqi is ready to give his testimony through the pen, though he does so instead by giving an “exclusive interview” with the poet, chosen because he can give expression to the “frightening mask”. The charred Iraqi is thus a voice which speaks from beyond the grave, like Virgil for Dante or like the dead German soldier in Wilfred Owen’s ‘Strange Meeting’ ‘Strange Meeting’
[2] War journalism and journalism in general is characterized by the desire for exclusive interviews. Imagine the scoop to get the real story from an Iraqi soldier, and a dead one too. Tony Harrison’s poetry itself is linked to journalism: his poem appeared, on his insistence, in the news (rather than the literature) section of the Guardian. He was subsequently sent to Bosnia in 1995 specifically to write poems about the war. Tony Harrison is thus a “war poet” in a very special sense, with a job similar to that of a “war correspondent”.
[3] The first lines of T.S. Eliot’s ‘The Journey of the Magi’ (“A cold coming we had of it/Just the worst time of the year/For a journey ...”) gave the title to Tony Harrison’s poem and appeared at the head of Harrison’s poem when it was originally published. Harrison gives Eliot’s first words a sexual sense, and this is typical of his iconoclastic treatment of some of the accepted canons of English literature. Harrison’s poem, however, continues the sense of the cold and unwelcome nature of the epiphany: in Eliot’s version an awakening to the cold difficulties of the Christian life; in Harrison’s the cold barbarism of the war in Iraq.
[4] The Iraqi army used nerve gas during the war against Iran in the 1980s.
[5] last rhymes with gassed in Tony Harrison’s Yorkshire accent. See his poem ‘Them and [uz]’ if you want to enjoy Harrison’s attacks on Received Pronunciation, which he throws “into the lap of dozing Daniel Jones”.
[6] The technological sophistication of the Americans enables them to be immortal – or at least to procreate after death. The rest of us are “stuck with sex”.
[7] But the poet’s job is to do just this: to look into the frightening mask, the “gaze of the Gorgon” and be able to speak, to reach the warring nations with the soldier’s testimony.
[8] The American soldier watches television – but also fires his weapons through monitoring the target on a screen?
[9] “to show them that you are angry with them, either by telling them or by using physical force” [AM: INFORMAL, RUDE] (Collins Cobuild English Dictionary for Advanced Learners). An expression beloved by George Bush Snr. with regard to Iraq
[10] “GOTCHA” (= got you, “preso”). This was the full page headline of the Sun newspaper in 1982 “celebrating” the sinking of the Argentinian ship the Belgrano during the Falklands War. The Belgrano was in fact sailing away from the hostilities and was outside of the 200-mile exclusion zone proclaimed by the British. 323 Argentinian lives were lost. In the British general election of 1983, an independent candidate stood against Margaret Thatcher, the British Prime Minister during the war, in her constituency, Finchley, for a party ironically named “Belgrano Blood Hunger”.
[11] Tabloid newspaper owned by Rupert Murdoch well-known for its large headlines in bold type.
[12] The “Desert Rats” was the name given to the British 7th Armoured Division in North Africa during the Second World War, commanded by General Montgomery.
[13] “Desert Storm” was the name given to the military campaign of the US against Iraq in 1991.
[14] In the voice of an advertiser.
[15] During the 1991 war, the Iraqis fired 39 Scud missiles into Israel in an attempt to draw it into the conflict. The missiles resulted in some damage and a few casualties.
[16] Notice the direction that the charred Iraqi is facing – away from Kuwait and the conflict, towards Baghdad.
[17] The sacred mosque of Mecca.
[18] The ark of the covenant, sacred to the Jews
[19] Christian and Muslim symbols respectively.
[20] The retreating Iraqi army set fire to Kuwaiti oil plants before leaving. The result was immense clouds of smoke from burning oil