By Christopher Norris
1
In some ways you lot had it easy;
No bolt-holes for the conscience-queasy,
Though private motives might look sleazy
To later eyes
And the tone sound a trifle breezy
For darkening skies.
We got the 1950s view
Of them, the 1930s crew,
Courtesy Donald Davie, who
Said ‘keep the myth
Intact, but not for us to do
Such mind-tricks with’.
Nine decades on, we’re extra-wary
As storm-clouds mass and things look scary,
And it seems rather airy-fairy,
All your uptight
Soul-searching end-times stuff with nary
A nuke in sight.
Still we’d be thoroughly remiss
If, gazing into that abyss,
We took it as our chance to diss
Prodigious gifts
Like yours that have us reminisce:
Those clouds, those rifts!
Maybe you had it off too pat,
Helmeted airman, and all that
(To some) familiar ’30s chat,
But who, these days,
Could play the verbal acrobat
In such deft ways?
2
‘MacSpaunday’ – so Roy Campbell chose
To put you down, along with those
At whom he wished to thumb his nose –
Spender, MacNiece,
Day-Lewis – in whom your influence shows
Up, piece by piece.
No hiding it, the fascist streak
In Campbell’s crude attempt to wreak
Rough justice on your leftist clique
In his joint send-up,
Of pansy poets each too weak
To keep his end up.
Rough stuff alright, but you came back
With finer verse-skills and a knack
For bringing out just what they lack,
Those artless brawlers
Who manage metric shifts of tack
Like steering trawlers.
You ‘had it easy’ just because
The times allowed that short-lived pause
For thought, the brief exemption-clause
That once preceded
The onset of those earlier wars –
Gave time where needed.
Wystan, if you could simply jump
Nine decades forward, get to pump
The bar-flies for the goods on Trump,
The USA’s
Moronic President, you’d dump
The laurel bays!
3
So yes, we’re up Shit Creek alright,
Not lost in thought before the fight
But knowing that, each day or night,
They may go out,
Those last ‘ironic points of light’
You wrote about.
For now the irony’s succumbed
To a dark cynic mood benumbed
By lies and threats routinely drummed
Into dull brains
Or sniffed by noses duly thumbed
At hope’s remains.
Back then you thought: though many fell
For Hitler’s line, it’s time to tell
Those Nazi swine how they’d do well
To chicken out
Since we’ll bring home to them what hell
Is all about.
And now? Dear Wystan, don’t look now,
Don’t raise a mild ironic brow,
As once you did, and thus allow
This scoundrel time
To witness each unbooed-at bow
For each new crime.
For we’ve an heir of Chamberlain,
Starmer (Sir Keir!), who wears it plain,
The genocidal mark of Cain,
And licks ass for
Whatever favours he can gain
From Murder Corps.
4
You’ll scarce believe me, but the State
Of Israel’s come to demonstrate
Just what you said: that victims wait
Their turn to kill,
Maim, torture, and annihilate,
All by God’s will.
Those laws the UN set in place
Post-1945 in case
Some goon thought his the chosen race
Now count for naught
With no NaZionist brought to face
A war-crimes court.
Meanwhile, our treacherous PM
Lines up to kiss the tyrant’s hem
While giving not a thought to them,
Those thousands slaughtered,
So the choice fronds of Jesse’s stem
Are fed and watered.
Back then the moral compass wobbled
But never quite left judgement hobbled
So that, while venal statesmen squabbled,
You, Wystan, spoke
Wise thoughts that had no slogans cobbled
To fool the folk.
Now it’s those same old BBC
News services which used to be,
For the most part, decently free
Of government meddling
That join each Israel-sponsored spree
Of lies they’re peddling.
5
There’s other things you’ll find it hard
To credit, like old people barred
From bearing some such tame placard
As ‘stop the killing’
While bodies shattered, twisted, charred
Get third-page billing.
Truth is, the government’s running scared
Because caught napping, unprepared
For finding those fierce feelings shared
By all whose vote
They’d once have had but now, teeth bared,
Are at their throat.
The PM, Starmer, made it clear
How he’d lick any fascist’s rear
Who’d do him ‘deals’ or ease his fear
That others might
Be quick to bend the tyrant’s ear
Get sweet-talk right.
You had that bunch, Lord Halifax
And Co., plus their assorted hacks
Still pushing it, the case for Pax
Germanica, while
The ration-packs and first attacks
Hit rank and file.
But really, that vile ’30s lot
Had nothing on the bunch we’ve got
In office now in terms of what
They’ll do to get
First crack at it, Trump’s licking-spot –
Then start the tête-à -tête.
6
Still those mixed messages arrive
From you, holed up in that low dive
On 52nd Street, but I’ve
Worse news from this
Our dog-year Twenty-Twenty-Five
You shouldn’t miss.
It says: don’t trust a Party-label,
Or kid yourselves that you’re still able
To trust the ‘Labour’ tag’s quite stable
And won’t get skewed
Enough to mean ‘now junk that fable –
Bad attitude!’.
For they’ve not just sold out like those
Peace-in-our-timers who’d oppose
The rush to war yet still knew foes,
Belatedly,
From friends and thus saw fit to close
Ranks, bend the knee.
Not so with a PM who’ll brand
Octogenarians who stand
Against mass-slaughter just a band
Of ‘terrorists’
While putting his Trump-vassal’s hand
To victim-lists.
Some say ‘count it a practice-run,
That ’30s thing when wars were won
By bigger bomb or better gun,
Not like this age
When yields approach the gigaton
And goons rampage.
7
‘Police-state’? pushing it a bit
As yet, though often seems to fit
When words, or thoughts, once deemed legit,
(Like just this morning)
Earn years in gaol from some old beak
By way of warning.
Some say it’s started, World War Three,
Not yet declared ‘officially’,
But evidenced in all we see
As Israel turns
A fascist killer-state and we,
While Gaza burns,
Vent our deep shame poetically,
Stay Audenesque in prosody,
Sing songs for Palestine the Free,
And meanwhile yearn
To throttle those who’d blank our plea
As mere ‘concern’.
Meanwhile, and ‘altogether elsewhere’,
As you might say, the medics bear,
With bloodied patients, their own share
Of holocaust
While lamentations fill the air –
Grim Pentecost.
Wystan, your remnant hopes once mattered,
Those ‘points of light’, though widely scattered,
Because back then, when good folk chattered,
Their chat might spark
Revolt at lives and bodies shattered
When times were dark.
8
Just now they’d scarcely raise a glimmer
As conscience-lights grow daily dimmer,
The killing-fields absorb their shimmer,
And those who cook
Them up, fake ‘peace-plans’ left to simmer,
Aren’t brought to book.
So, master, tell us now: what cheer
Unless we leap that thought-frontier
Where ‘deeds, not words!’ stands written clear,
And likely you’d
Have stayed light-pointilliste for fear
Of how their mood
Might swiftly change, their feelings veer,
Those willing conscripts, should you steer
Them off the war-path or appear,
From your US
Safe spot, to scorn what they held dear:
Brit pluckiness.
Such ironies have had their day,
Their fine gradations given way
To brute directives that convey:
‘You bunch of losers,
Cross me and there’ll be hell to pay –
Beggars, not choosers!’.
That bar on 52nd Street
Is where you faced down the defeat
Of ‘clever hopes’, the forced retreat
From every last
Redoubt of willing self-deceit
That once held fast.
9
No time for those ingenious ploys
That your persona so enjoys
When talking down the gung-ho boys
Or talking up
Thought’s power to quieten Hitler’s noise
And muzzle Krupp.
So why take up the ‘thirties pen
To make the same mistake again,
Just massaging the poet’s yen
To set folk thinking
‘Cherish those points of light’, just when
It’s red they’re blinking.
Let speech-acts henceforth perlocute,
Pass straight to actions, bear no fruit
Unless it be in deeds to suit
A conscience-call
Direct, not one whose Hamlet-route
Makes cowards of all.
