(AA) Canto 66: 9-11
Al Qu’aida
You will be treasurer of my heart,
Although my body must depart
Learning and science to attain
Adam De La Halle
There is a new threat to the Allied world
Outwith Europe, from the Afghan passes,
After the mats of morning prayer furl’d,
Soldiers of Jihad tend to their classes;
What power reign’d
Thro’ their spirit’s guide,
“Paradise can be gain’d thro holy suicide!”
By cruxdom number’d they nineteen,
Full frenzied & factitious,
Stalking the airways as unseen
Servants of the ambitious
Al Qu’aida, what does this mean?
What outcome their wishes,
To penetrate the land of Liberty
& channel hate into a strange fury?
Turning off the television,
They chatted man-to-man,
Holy mission! The decision
To instigate the plan
Was theirs & theirs by birthright like the death-flights of Japan.
Florida
September 9th
2001
Airjackers
Your son has come,
To answer your call.
In my mouth and in my blood
Ali Squalli Houssaini
As the cabin crew filter’d the coffee,
Five Arabs full of fervour’s brave intent
Rose from their seats, rather nonchalantly
Stepp’d up the incline of the plane’s ascent;
“Can we help you?”
The stewardesses sought,
How deftly sharp-blades drew red lines across the throat.
Blood gush’d from each jugular gash,
Happy mood alters abrupt,
A flash of angry shouts abash,
“Do nothing else we blow up!”
Against the lock’t cockpit men crash,
More threats of death erupt,
The panicking pilot opens the door,
Two air hostesses dying on the floor.
Stern-faced, head-banded Arabs cry
Above the engine whine,
“No-one shall die!” their dreamy eye
Seem’d bless’d with the divine,
As distant thro’ the windows rose the Manhattan skyline.
Flight 11
September 11th 2001
08:40
The North Tower
I asked God to spare me pain.
God said, No.
Suffering draws you apart from worldly cares
Joanne Gobure
How vastly the capital of the Earth
Outrolls her concrete sprawl without abate,
World-famous monuments peep from its girth –
Liberty’s torchlight & the Empire State,
Dwarf’d by the twins,
Unrivall’d gemini…
The tragedy begins… a child points to the sky….
Peering upon the ants below,
From the hundred & first floor,
She froze dolicapaxan slow
As the wings of death did roar,
Life flashing by before the blow,
Then she was there namore,
Caught in Dantean incineration
As on all sides surges devastation.
Struck edifice stood like a rock,
Then… shook with a shudder,
Its aftershock spreads block-by-block
“There’s been a disaster!”
“Man, a goddam jet has flown into the World Trade Centre!”
New York City
September 11th 2001
08:47
In the Field
That’s not how I suddenly become a poet,
By wetting my lips in the Hippocrene,
Or dreaming on the twin peaks of Parnassus
Persius
From musing-grounds around old Rusthall Wood
I dallied home, poesis almost spent,
A spot of morning strolling to the good
My house-mate serves up pleasant refreshment;
A spotted tart,
A pot of sweet Earl Grey,
“A film’s about to start!” “Which one?” “The Longest Day!”
Niave young lads switch’d on the box,
Wise men crank’d up the volume,
Twin Towers crumbling into rocks,
Twas a new & brutal doom –
Casting such global aftershocks
From a dusty mushroom,
Wide-surging thro’ a world of steel & brick,
Straight from some seventies disaster flick!
What image splash’d across TV
From Sky to Channel Four,
We sip our tea, hesitantly,
Rebaptized evermore,
Are Men condemned to ever live their lives in fear of War?
Royal Tunbridge Wells
September 11th 2001
21:21
Pentagon
I heard my throat deep from the well,
The wolf my brothers’ summon spell
Invok’d, did hear & fled to Hell
Abbas Beydoun
The roaring Boeing honed in for the kill,
Al Quai’da’s chosen warring weapon,
Ignoring White House & Capitol Hill,
Preferring this five-sided bastion
Symbol of might
Beside the Potomac
A simple morning flight becomes a bold attack.
It crash’d into a helipad
& slid into a building,
The fuel rich tanks of the Jihad
In violent ‘WHOOM’ exploding,
From Moscow to Islamabad
On the spot reporting –
A universal moment on TV,
Not one attack, not two attacks, but three!
This firestorm fell fury daubs
The scene in smoke-swabb’d paint,
Thro blue, white strobes, assail’d earlobes,
Sev’ral survivors faint,
Behind, a crawling officer, arm cast up as a saint!
Washington
September 11th 2001
09:46
George Bush
Why are you staring at me
as if I were America itself
the new Empire
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
An aide whisper’d in the president’s ear
“Sir, there has been an incident…” struck dumb,
‘Ministrations defining moment here,
Time to honour his nation’s faith now come
Stands Cowpoke George,
Subject of so much scorn,
A chance for friends to forge & image be reborn
For like Thatcher, Mussolini
& his father before him,
Votes can be won thro’ victory
& healthy jingoism,
He spoke with calm assurity,
“It is our country’s aim
To bring all these terrorists to justice
& blow them sky high off the Earth’s surface.”
His ear whisper’d into again,
“They’ve hit the Pentagon…”
By private plane, fighters in train,
He dash’d to Washington
By crazy zig-zag course, “Sir, there might be another one.”
Somewhere over America
September 11th 2001
09:57
Revenge
How transient that lithe-limbed lady’s life,
stooping to sow seedlings, scorched by the sun,
her face plastered with mud and dusty earth
Ukñā Suttantaprījā Ind
The Allies muster clumpetty replies,
Cluster-bombs bash, from stratofortresses,
Big-stinking paths, defenceless from the skies
Ground squadrons groan at their falling forces;
A fierce advance
Against the Taliban,
Who’ll take heroic stance, defending to a man.
Step-by-step the Allies struggle
Thro’ the rugged mountain bar,
Tho’ Taliban have fled Kabul
& battle-scarr’d Kandahar,
All the local warlords huddle
Around Bin Laden’s star,
Hiding in his protective catacoomb,
Glendower of the Tora-Boran gloom.
As every day gun-noises near
Capture draws on closer,
Fresh hopes appear, bereft of fear,
Cautiously Osama
Sped west to Pakistan thro’ the passes of Paktia.
Afghanistan
November
2001
Peace March
Nail to the mast her holy flag,
Set every threadbare sail,
& give her to the god of storms
OW Holmes
They march’d en masse into the capital;
Made a peacehugging, socialist anthill,
Heavy-hearted with forthcoming battle,
Why would the world unleash war’s terror still?
From age to youth
Human majority
Choose not the dragonstooth of Hell’s hostility.
O world! sweet world! sweet world of mine!
&… billions of others,
Would we not wish a sun to shine
Upon a world of brothers,
Why would ye wish to hear the whine
Of our wailing mothers?
For surely cruel lessons have been learnt
When Prague fell & the streets of Poplar burnt.
I wander silent thro’ the roar
Rumtumbling thro’ the crowd,
“What is life for” “Make tea not war!”
The gentle clamour loud,
The later portions of my task with firmer thought endow’d.
Hyde Park
February 15th
2003
Testamundi Imperatrix
The birth canal is yours
Either to open or to close.
Open it you must, dear elders
Hermana Ramarui
A poet born in Burnley, who’d have thought
Of such event – he’d try an epic too!
Completely independent & self-taught,
Finding his art’s traditions in the zoo,
His wildheart freed
Her white wings, to obtain
This Pegasus, this steed, his precious Sylvermane.
With herbal teas & verbal tricks,
Thro’ days of molten sapphire,
He fashion’d the Imperatrix,
His ode to Britain’s empire,
& setting in its closing bricks
He read it by the fire,
A wattle church, but now what cathedral
‘Cross mind’s eye darts, & starts with a battle.
First fifteen thousand lines were done,
Among them had reviv’,
Napoleon & Wellington
In verses keen incis’d,
Melodically, phantasmagorically contriv’d.
Burnley
2004
Mumble Words 