Saturday 13 November 2010

HENRY MORGAN'S MARCH ON PANAMA -A.G.Prys-Jones (1888 -??)

Henry Morgan  (Harri Morgan ) who was born in 1635 in Llanrhymney, then a village between Cardiff and Newport, in South Wales, to a prosperous farming family, who died on 25th August in 1688 in  Jamaica , was otherwise known as Admiral Henry Morgan, privateer. Regarded as the greatest of the privateers, amassing huge fleets, attacking prominent targets and being the worst enemy of the Spanish since Sir Francis Drake. Now the face of spiced Rum, which on all accounts, his excessive consumption off led to his demise from acute alcoholism.

Morgan's curls are matted,
His lips are cracked and dry,
His tawny beard is tangled,
And his plumed hat hangs awry:
But his voice still booms like thunder
Through the foetid jungle glade
As he marches, bold as Lucifer,
Leading his gaunt brigade.

Twelve hundred famished buccaneers
Blistered, bitten and bled,
A stricken mob of men accursed
By the monstous sun o'erhead:
Twelve hundred starveling scarecrows
Without a crumb to eat,
And not a drink for tortured throats
In that grim, festering heat.
Twelve hundred threadbare musketeers
Rotting in tropic mud
Where the reeking, fevered mangroves
Wake havoc in their blood:
Twelve hundred febrile wretches,
A legion of the dead:
But Morgan in his blue brocade
Goes striding on ahead.
Twelve hundred tatterdemalions,
The sorriest, maddest crew
That ever the green savannahs saw
When the Spanish bugles blew:
Twelve hudred rattling skeletons
Who sprang to life, and then
Like a wild wave took Panama,
For they were Morgan's men.


a captive bows begore Welsh pirate Sir Henry Morgan's as Morgan and his men sack the city of Panama in the 1870s.



Thursday 11 November 2010

Raymond Garlick - Auguries of Guilt.

One must be realistic : man
Is crueller and more violent than
All other living creatures. We
Alone of animals agree
To decimate our species by
Polluting land and sea and sky.
This we must face: the human lot
Is to be capable of garrotte.
To be a creature who guillotines,
Hangs, shoots, tortures; builds a store
Of nuclear weapons; goes to war.

No other animal does this -
Not the hamadryad's kiss
Nor the scorpion's plunging thorn
Match the weapons man has worn.
No cloud of hook-beaked birds of prey
Dismembered Dresden that dark day.
The leopard nor the jaguar
Ripped apart Hiroshima.
No flame-eyed, ravening tiger fell
On Guernica. Man shaped its hell.
Wolf and hyena had no part
In Auschwitz. All was human art.

The world view of a red-eyed bull
Today is quite respectable.
Who are our Great? The school-books pick
Alexander and Frederick;
And, to impress that violence rules,
The cane and strap sing in the schools.
What is honour? a gun-bright guard,
Its files inspected in charade;
A statue in a city square
Of General X slashing the air,
The shadow of arch-violence thrown
Down the ages from the stone.

Mock machine-guns make fine toys
For nicely bought up little boys,
And tailored royals ride the street
Costumed for bloodshed, gloved and neat
Whose image many a church augments
With laid-up flags of regiments.
Each village has its cenotaph
Raised on violence's behalf.
Man is the animal that hates.
What hope for us, for nations, states?
This: only we, who hate like hell,
Only we can love as well.

FROM:- Glas-nos, Cerddi Dros Heddwch/ Poems for Peace. CND Cymru 1987.


LEST WE
FORGET

Wednesday 10 November 2010

Thursday 4 November 2010

Dance with your Neighbours for F**K's Sake.

Many Western media outlets have been delighted to report that two Israeli women have teamed up to become the first same-sex couple to compete in a version of the internationally popular television series 'Dancing with the Stars'.
Indeed it is a great day for humanity with even Rupert Murdoch's Sky news reporting that "30 different countries have versions of the show, but none have done what Israel has done this week.

Israel because of this is now being praised for being an exemplary , tolerant and liberal society, but how come it won't even dance with it's own neighbours. Ah the smell of hypocricy.

Keep on dancing everybody. Heddwch.
http://www.gilad.co.uk/writings/gilad-atzmon-dance-with-your-neighbours-for-fks-sake.html

Sakineh Astiani; EMERGENCY, THERE ARE 24 HRS TO GET KEY POWERS TO TAKE EMERGENCY ACTION TO STOP HER EXECUTION.


Take action to try stop her execution here.



http://www.avaaz.org/en/24h_to_save_sakineh/?v1



Monday 1 November 2010

Britons Never Shall be Slaves. - Helen Heslop.

Henry Drake still at school sees
His father, put away for
Misbehaviour, wave goodbye.
He cries.

A teenager before the
Word is born, the Army claims
Him for the country's fight for
Freedom.

Benghazi - weather sunny,
Plenty grub; that's new. Payment
Too. Peace intervenes; home to
Blighty.

Better off by one new suit
He's free to find a job, low
Pay, and a girlfriend, Ann, keen
To save.

Romance falls through, but there's his
Cycling, gardening, fishing,
Same boring job, same low wage,
But free,

At forty-four Henry Drake
Is made redundant. 'Sorry. . . .
Years. . . cut backs, but we . . . thanks for. . . '
He's free

To care for his mother, ailing
Fast. He does his nest; she dies
At eighty-two, leaving him
Free to

Stare awhile, at least he's hept
Some hair; he'll join . . . make new . . .
But Englishmen of Henry's
Station

Unprivileged, no decent
Education, find themselves
Ditched by a freedom loving
Nation.




REPRINTED FROM :-
SING FREEDOM, ed Judith Nicholls
Faber and Faber, Published with assistance of Amnesty International, 1991.