1. I saw that the shanty town had grown over the graves and
that the crowd lived among the memorials.
2. It was never very cold; a parachute slung between an angel
and an urn afforded shelter for newcomers.
3. Wooden beds were essential.
4. These people kept their supplies of gasoline in litre bottles,
which the children sold at the cemetery gates.
5. That night the city was attacked with rockets.
6. The firebrigade bided its time.
7. The people dug for money beneath their beds, to pay
the firemen.
8. The shanty town was destroyed, the cemetery restored.
9. Seeing a plane shot down, not far from the airport, many of
the foreign community took fright.
10. The next day, they joined the queues in the gymnasium,
asking to leave.
11. When the victorious army arrived, they were welcomed by
the firebrigade.
12. This was the only spontaneous demonstration in their favour.
13. Other spontaneous demonstrations in their favour were
organised by the victors.
James Fenton
Posted by flambingo at May 20, 2004 05:19 PM | TrackBackwhat is this from?
Posted by: quinn on May 20, 2004 09:16 PMsorry, should have referenced this better (but actually theres simply piss all that you couldn't just find with google, there's not a online repository). its a poem (obviously) by fenton, its from "the memory of war and the children in exile", which i dont' think is in print together anymore, but is most certainly available in parts. fenton is one of those creations that proves shelly's epigram that poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.
hes an ex journalist, but a poet first (i can't personally imagine that there could be better war reporters than poets or artists, something that at several thousand years remove is evident to me reading christopher logue's war music at the moment).
i strongly recommend "a german requiem" from the memory of war..
"It is not what they built. It is what they knocked down.
It is not the houses. It is the spaces between the houses.
It is not the streets that exist. It is the streets that no longer exist."
his work as a journalist for the new statesman witnessing the end the vietman war and the collapse of the cambodian reqime (in the memory of war) is astonishing: "dead soliders" is, to my mind, an exemplar of how to write poetry about the present and the political.
there is little of his work online, its not like most of the poetry thats reproduced for weddings and funerals online. theres little sentimental about him, or rather theres little we would dismiss as sentiment.
my personal favorite is wind:
This is the wind, the wind in a field of corn.
Great crowds are fleeing from a major disaster
Down the long valleys, the green swaying wadis,
Down through the beautiful catastrophe of wind.
Families, tribes, nations and their livestock
Have heard something, seen something. An expectation
Or a gigantic misunderstanding has swept over the hilltop
Bending the ear of the hedgerow, with stories of fire and sword.
I saw a thousand years pass in two seconds.
Land was lost, languages rose and divided.
This lord went east and found safety.
His brother sought Africa and a dish of aloes.
Centuries, minutes later one might ask
How the hilt of the sword wandered so far from the smithy
And somewhere they will sing: Like chaff we were borne
In the wind. This is the wind in a field of corn