In Syria did Cameron
A pleasurable jape decree:
Where Euphrates river swells with death
And bodies numberless
Drift far by salted fields.
So ten times he’s wont to quake the earth
As trembling mothers give weeping infants birth
There once were souks with laughing folks like you and me
Now not so much as a stump, a withered tree
The land of ancient treasures, older than the hills
Was lost to ISIS, through uncalculated kills.
But O! That deep romantic heart which wept
Of collaterals flung beneath a coffin cover!
O savage beasts! No holy prophet warned them
A false angelic liberty would haunt them
And on the other side, demonic jihad lovers!
The gates of hell, with ceaseless turmoil seething,
Were opened wide, as sand took leave of breathing,
A mighty Catherine wheel descended from the skies:
As citizen hearts did burst
Village fragments vaulted like Egyptian hail,
Or imprisoned Arabs beneath enhanced interrogation’s flail:
And mid these japing wonks, now once and ever
Floods of blood and poison filled the sacred rivers.
Some few worthies, meandering with a mazy motion
Through lie and subterfuge their noble stories ran,
And truth was swallowed by the jaws of caverns measureless to man,
The roaring tumult washed up a lifeless ocean;
And ’mid this tumult Cameron heard from far
Well-gilded geldings prophesying war!
The shadow of the screen of pleasure
Fell across the Tigris waves;
Treasured freedom, money th’ measure
Fountains of blood and slaughtered braves
Oh what a miracle of rare device,
A genial cabinet with sullen hearts of ice!
A poetess with a hand grenade
In a vision once my master saw:
She was a courageous Kurdish lass
And raid she made, again a raid:
Chanting of perfidious Ankara.
Could I find a way to sing her
Her bullets and her bombs
O, such a deep delight! She’d fund us!
With her sirens loud and long,
I would build my noble castle in the air,
Ah, sunny lass! ‘Gainst men of ice!
And all who knew my name should picture me,
And all should sneer, Beware! Beware!
My flashing smile, my fine-combed hair!
You chose us time and time again.
Next time think twice!
And think upon the guiltless dead…
For I on power deep have drunk
The fruits of that
They lie before your eyes.
***
First published in The Satirist, 29 December 2015