Menin Gate, 8pm

We, the onlookers, dressed for Summer,
Less of a troop and more of a pack.
Shins and forearms and heads uncovered –
Only the jackdaws are dressed in black.
Partly honouring, partly gawking,
English voices amiably talking,
Not many present are younger than fifty –
One or two pause to read the plaque.

Officials in blazers, though we’re well-behaved.
Squaddies’ fatigues, their shoulders say Dutch,
Though I swear their “left-right-left” is in English –
The crowd wear no medals – would that be too much ?
The towers of names are columns of debt,
Bearing down, by rank before alphabet,
In a random sample, I look for my own
In the Surreys and sappers and serjeants and such.

Suddenly, a hush, an announcement by speaker,
Telling we must not talk or applaud.
A trio of buglers – was that the Last Post ?
Then a soldier steps up, a little over-awed.
“They shall grow not old” he reads,
His accent heavy, and yet succeeds
To draw from us a shared Amen:
“We shall remember them”, these Brits abroad.

The bugles again, and wreaths are laid,
The squad march off in the evening sun,
And suddenly ev’rything melts into chatter –
We mill for a while, but the service is done.
The road reopens, the traffic drives through,
We pose for a final selfie or two,
But we’ve far too many atrocities to remember,
To focus on only one.

Haram

Strange to think The Satanic Verses
Was ever even published at all.
And following from the string of hearses,
Who would dare now have the gall ?
I don’t like it myself, it’s not for me,
But that’s hardly the point –
It’s even more vital we keep speech free
When it puts us out-of-joint.
But the zealots have won, we all self-censor,
And now the Left have caught the bug –
Trading-in Marx for Marks & Spencer
And sweeping their principals under the rug.
The truth is, they admire the power
To shut down speech and cancel voices –
They’ve fatwa-envy, to make us all cower
For daring to stray from the authorised choices.
Well, I’m just gonna come right out and say it –
Islam and Woke are a toxic trigger.
Not all their adherents, let’s not overplay it,
But enough, who pursue their commandments with vigour.
So we really need to come down hard on apologists,
Stop their political victim-blaming,
As they unironic’ly draw-up blacklists,
Shutting-down speech while fanning the flaming.
But now we’re shocked, that someone attacked
The one we attacked with ferocity,
Named and paraded and finally sacked
For the sin of secular blasphemy.
So we clutch our pearls and wring our hands,
At what could drive this murderous spate.
Then we push to get a comedian banned
For saying the Koran is full of hate.

To be clear, the Bible is equally hate-filled – but most Christians have the decency to be embarrassed by theirs. Sometimes this shame is subconscious, but even the most fundamental literalists will inwardly wince if you bring up –

Job 1 (God giving his approval for Satan to kill Job’s ten children for the sake of a bet), or Numbers 25:6-8 (Phinehas murders a inter-racial couple and God is appeased and stops his plague), or Psalms 137:9 (happiness comes from dashing the babies of your enemies against the rocks), and let’s not forget Deuteronomy 20:10-14 (when beseiging a city, offer peace – if they surrender, enslave them, if they resist, slaughter every male (even the male babies), and take the women and girls for yourselves) –

They may mutter something about context, and ‘appropriate for their own time’, and change the subject to the New Testament – while ignoring Colossians 3:22-24 (slaves, obey your masters !).

     Get Up Off Our Knees

Another atrocity, another round of blame,
With the righties claiming they’re all the same,
And the lefties burying their heads in their guilt,
And our knee-jerk laws that are jerry-built.
Another outrage, another assault,
And we all us know who’s really at fault,
But none of us will say –
Mohammad.  And Jesus.  And Shiva.  And Yahweh.
And the dozens of others, monsters all –
Let’s stop the worship, let them fall.
Just why are we honouring the afterglow
From the morals of how many centuries ago ?
But no, don’t ban them, not a single sect –
Just stop any pretence of honour or respect.
Laugh at their gods, like we did before,
To Zeus and Baal and Ra and Thor.