That ethnic differences should
lead men into a darkling wood
stained with an internecine blood
is to be mourned
when there is much beatitude
within our bourne.
That dogmas snap at heel and head
with bitter teeth: and that deep red
dresses the bride who might have wed
is cruel fact:
these are the tracks of those who fled
in cataracts
of children, women. Neighbours once
they were united in the dance
of a diurnal circumstance
of grief and joy:
but now some raise obsessive guns
at girl and boy.
As if at Hallowe’en they wear
patches of ancestry and dour
dogmas composed from out the air
(for Nature isn’t,
O seasonal Nature’s not aware
of more than present).
Ceilidhs you held in common halls,
you had luxurious carnivals,
but now we see such crimson palls
as scorch the gaze:
there leap across your local walls
blood-red ideas
of kin and creed, to smash a door.
Members of an élitist corps
you tear at the colourful décor
that men must build
to identify that they are here,
by self beguiled.
Nature unconsciously swells
to green and red: and it compels
even human buildings to its rules,
a passionate queen
of weeds and lilies and bluebells,
a rage of green.
But conscious man will kill and smash
frail secret envelopes of the flesh –
hack at beard and at moustache –
because he’s armed
with ideas made of patchy trash
that grief’s confirmed,
or loneliness or heritage,
or a new-learned unfocused rage.
O he’s a vulture in a cage
that has been shaped
by others than himself – typed page
from manuscript.
Anthologies are justified
from gods and creeds to let men ride
on tall infernal horses. Pride
plays lovely flutes.
Who leads this troop but Homicide
with shining boots?
Their heavenly uniform is blue,
and complex theories tattooed
are pictures of a large and crude
comic-strip idea.
Green nature did not once imbue
such vicious fear,
but is composed of trees and stones,
and not these merciless monotones.
Melodious birds play different tunes
at night or day –
my lovely throstles, larks and wrens,
multi-voiced play!
Christians, Moslems and Hindus
have built a shelter from bad news
from creeds from which they pick and choose
lest they should die
alone in tenement or mews
beneath a sky
unscripted by a higher hand.
They build a pure Utopian land
where there is ‘neither rain nor wind
nor mist nor snow’
from which they gaze on the unplanned
chaos below.
I’ve heard one say a Catholic
is a close acquaintance of Old Nick,
a Fenian bastard fit for brick
or knife or bullet.
The Pope wears green, a politic
fat Pontius Pilate.
Across the now-anointed Boyne
there rides a horse – O heaven-born.
Truth sparkles from its saddle horn,
O brightly blue,
and a flag is raised to firmly burn
for the favoured few.
Of course Mohommedan and Sikh,
The Turk and the ‘perfidious Greek’,
the Jew and his ‘usurious clique’
are also shaped
to dwell in that demonic reek,
by the inept.
The jester wore his tunic once
in double colour: he would prance
and joke for his empurpled prince
at laden table.
He saved himself by shifty stance,
sparkling, unstable.
But those who wear idea’s hues,
tunics of yellow, red or blue,
endorse one colour and enthuse
about its virtues.
O always heaven’s precious news
must come in courteous
monolingual monochrome.
For God when He is at home
and writing drama, prose, or poem
has a one-hued ribbon.
He is imperialist as Rome
was before Gibbon.
One only colour and décor
is what God loves. That is His gloire.
Flags constitute his long histoire
and they are ours.
Let spring burst richly by the Loire
with single flowers.
Flags wave above the random stones,
are winding sheets above men’s bones:
because of them we hear the moans
of dying flesh,
while knifing geriatric crones
bitterly slash.
Over the ground in green and red
above the pale anonymous dead
from whom their riotous blood has bled
the flags make sail.
Whereto, we ask. To lively trade
or credal jail?
Ideas clash as soldiers toil
in naïve energy to foil
their enemies’ imperial style
backed by the critics.
There is a vicious bloody boil
of different ethics.
Naïve soldier, you may be just
fighting your own interest
and the flag you capture with hot wrist
may be your own,
and the knife that twists inside your breast
made of your bone.