Don al d'Uq - page 3

XXIV
Off that he couldn't settle down
With Jay, and have some lovely kids,
In some nice little place not far from town,
(Whatever town that was), their healthy ids
In planetary union kissed and blessed,
But ... I must just accept that for the rest
Of this story at least, they're both alone,
With demons of that vile genus, home grown.

XXV
( You know - I think they'd both conceived a yen,
Not for the fat cat glamour of the West,
But for those chinks of light which, now and then,
Shine out to show our world off at its best,
And, being writ or painted or some way
Recorded, often tend to play
Too great a role in shaping the impressions
Of foreigners, who in spite of lessons

XXVI
( To the contrary, will often cleave,
Not to the evidence of their own eyes,
But what their hearts would have them still believe;
The while they simultaneously despise
The gross, and crass, and cruel world they perceive
About them: shunning all its lies,
They yet retain a secret and residual
Belief in Western Individual -

XXVII
( - ism. Well - poets are to blame
For this. (I'm sorry but I have to speak the truth)
They - we - are born from anger, and ashamed
Of talent, till we strike the uncouth
World from off our shoulders, then we're free
To sing, and celebrate what we can see
For our own selves - a stance to which we're driven:
This doesn't mean that liberty's a 'given'.)

XXVIII
But I digress (again!): the point however,
Is that they both, al d'Uq especially,
In breaking up, thereby renounced for ever
The ecstasies of passion's burning Yes! All he
Had left was bitter memory, and,
I think, went off to seek God in the sand:
(I'd beg you see: it's part of my condition
That sometimes I must trust to supposition.)

XXIX
America he left behind for good,
(Or bad) - the swooning, endless plains,
The dreary towns, the ghastly suburbs, woods,
Tall forests too, or those that yet remain,
Big, vicious cities, roaring Rockies, swamps
Wherein the alligator writhes and stomps,
Hot deserts where the stoned out preacher raves,
And rattlesnakes and rockets lurk in caves.

XXX
We can but speculate on what he took
Away with him - I mean what grand design
He could perceive at work behind the look
Of things (which wasn't very pleasant) or what signs
Portended from that country which began
When puritans from 'persecution' ran,
With bibles, guns and cornseed, on the Mayflower,
(Not dreaming, then, of nuclear bombs and Gay Power.)

XXXI
This motley, once set sail from Plymouth Sound,
After due travails, came to Plymouth Rock,
And, finding all was fair and good around,
Turned it, in three short centuries, to schlock:
No matter! God and Freedom were the thing,
Which heady anthem made the New World ring,
That now had space and leisure to address
(Strange concept) the 'pursuit' of happiness.

XXXII
Freedom! Let European despots rave,
And Sultans rant, and Kings and Queens beware:
These bold new settlements proclaimed their grave
That brooked no power but that which equals share,
And would no master tolerate, nor slave,
(Except for a few black ones) and were fair
And even towards natives on the lot,
Ninety percent of whom were shortly shot.

XXXIII
Now could that paradise on earth begin
Which had portended in the fervid dreams
Of vassals in an Old World stained by sin,
And ruled by feuding oligarghs, whose schemes
Of gain or conquest, gambled as with dice
The lives of their poor subjects, nor were nice
To anybody else's, or to they
As found ways less than orthodox to pray.

XXXIV
Oh, horrid Anglicans that would not leave
These poor, good folk alone to worship 'Gaad',
Who had the naked nerve to have conceived
Him separate from the King, and found it hard
To pay Church Tithes into the proffered plate,
That grasping hand by which the evil State
Claimed tax on their devotions: from that day
To this, no Yankee churches pay

XXXV
A cent into the bloated Federal heap
Which keeps the Pentagon in Prozac, plus
Allows all citizens a sounder sleep
From fear of murder by the great 'Not Us',
(i.e. the world - Not U.S. it might be,
Though folk do also fear the great Not Me.)
I'm getting scrambled: how do tax free psalms
Lead us so swiftly to a world in arms?

XXXVI
The Devil is the answer! He who crept
Aboard that pilgrim boat at dark of moon
And, lurking in the bilges while all slept,
Stowed silent until landing, when he soon
Sprang off into the grass and hills and streams,
Where to this day he lives: just when all seems
Benign and peaceful in the banks and shops
And schools of that great nation, up he pops

XXXVII
To massacre some children, trash some stocks,
Assassinate a President, let slip
The dogs of anger, burn some city blocks,
Etcetera, and so on; but his grip
Is really on the minds and hearts of they
That do not understand to what they pray,
Nor what desire their inner world comprises,
Their lives thus strewn, like minefields, with surprises.

XXXVIII
With all their gush and trumpery chest heaving,
Like some old heiffer striving to conceive,
It can be hard to know what they believe in,
But - Jesus bleeding Christ - do they believe.
The object's not the thing, so much as feeling,
Which floods the space the icon dealers leave
Unlabelled: angels called Moroni,
Celestial sportswear, aliens, talking ponies -

XXXIX
The icons swarm more numerous than buffalo,
Stampeding 'cross the prairies in the head,
(Whom Progress hailed with such a very tough 'Hallo',
That they, like most the Indians, are dead).
There's Gaad also, preeminent, though just,
In whom all dollar bills still bravely trust;
More interesting's the core feeling we find,
That reaches out from the unconscious mind.

XL
Their social norm, or gut levels religion's
(Within a carapace of rabid fear)
'Intelligent Self Interest', (though intelligence
Might warn that Self's a relative idea),
And so, from humble rapist up to President,
All think it most unmanly to be hesitant
To feed the inner monkey, or to wince
At slaughter, and this cannot alter, since

XLI
America, though thick with intellectuals,
All chewing on their lips to find some way
To bring the light of Reason in effectual
Relation to the good old USA,
Is run by a cabal of stalwart doers,
To whom the merest doubt starts at the brink
Of madness, and the rule of pimps and whoers,
So it is unAmerican to think.

XLII
And, to their boys beset by combat dread,
It really does not help them win the day
To be led by some general with a wombat's head,
Whose staff are half PR men (CIA),
As has been starkly seen when, out in 'Nam,
The massive martial might of Uncle Sam
Showed strategy, for all its bloody sins,
So far inferior to Ho Chi Minh's.

XLIII
The antidote of course, apart from lies,
Was money, and more money - who needs mind
When smart gizmos protect them from the skies?
Until the USA now spends, we find,
Some forty billion dollars on defence,
(Or four hundred - but who is counting pence?)
The while, some errant tribesman, from his tent a'gone,
Armed with a nail file, takes out half the Pentagon.

XLIV
Whoagh! Crazy World! What's happening, my masters?
Nor was this that day's only guided crash,
That saw e'en greater choreographed disasters -
Now, could it be our boy did something rash?
I don't know. Don't ask me. I told you:
This isn't some obscure device to hold you
In cliffhanging suspense. All I can say
Is someone must have planned the bloody day.

XLV
And quite a big day too - no matter what
One thinks of all the vapid Doomsday hype
It spawned, there's really quite a lot
Of questions of that rather awkward type
One needs to ask, like wherefore, whence, and why
Great Kings of Terror chose to drop in from the sky.
(Though Nostradamus is of small help here)
A bit more history might make things clear.

Canto the Sixth

I
The 'Old Man of the Mountain' - who was he?
(I don't know, cultured reader - perhaps you do)
Some dude up in the hills, where he was free
From others' governance, being hid from view,
Well fortified besides, and with a gang
Of killers who a knell of terror rang
Into the hearts of rulers far and wide:
Though he was hid, from him they could not hide.

II
This was in - well - it could be Kurdestan -
Old Persia possibly - perhaps Iraq,
Or some lost corner of Afghanistan:
It doesn't matter actually - my lack
Of scholarship in this is not the point -
Wherever the old sod maintained his joint,
He pulled a lot of strings: if he said 'pay',
You didn't tell his man to go away.

III
His man, you see - this was in olden years,
When folk were credulous (unlike today) -
And his man was no victim to those fears
Of injury or death, which human clay
Is heir to, and which make us quail
At thoughts of execution, pain (or jail);
His man however, stood above such vice
Or weakness, since he came from Paradise.

IV
'How that?' you might well ask. I'll tell you. See -
The Old Man got his lads from out the soukh,
The gutter, jail, wherever - set them free
From all that, took them to his nook,
(Wherever that was) where, now in his fief,
They trained into his service, one a thief,
Another one a spy, but lords of all
Were those sent out to murder at his call.

V
And these were took first to his Secret Garden
(So secret that I don't know where it was
Or what was in it). There, to harden
Their resolve he got them stoned. Strange? No, because
You see, he told them they were in
That place where, magically cleansed of sin
(Yes, Paradise!) Allah would beg them free
To lay their hands on all that they could see.

VI
Not just their hands neither. Know what I mean,
Squire? There were houris (ooh!),
Bints to you, Mush, tarts young and green,
(Though not so green neither) - boys, camels too
For all I know: whatever turned them on
Was theirs to fondle, grope or mount upon.
And this was where they'd go should they be killed
When on a mission. That they filled

VII
All vacancies for this elite squad's no surprise,
Nor that they volunteered for work: of course,
They first had to believe his filthy lies,
But, sad to tell, they hadn't the resource
Of our fine education, nor the will
To shun the hookah, Afric Woodbine, pill,
So off on deadly missions they would go ...
If only those poor lads had Just Said No.

VIII
Not only did these 'Hashishim' bequeath
The word assassin to our lingo, but
T'would seem they've modern heirs who live and breathe,
(At least until the coffin lid slams shut),
And seemed to think (in Two Thousand and One!)
They'd get to Paradise. Come on, my son,
They must be out to lunch. For starters,
The Koran says it's 'only if they're martyrs'.

IX
( Not like our Christian martyrs: for a start,
They don't do bongloads of the dread green weed,
Nor spend the afternoon with lurid tarts -
A good old rousing hymn is all they need
To teach them about Heaven, where they'll go,
After due persecution, nailing up or so,
To lie down with the lion and the lamb,
While listening to harp musicians jam.)

X
Now - someone has been getting at those lads,
It stands to reason. Some demented crank
Has got into their heads and drove them mad,
With loony tune ideas not worth a wank:
How come a bunch of freshfaced, hopeful students
All wind up doing something so imprudent
As getting on a plane and flying, splat!
Into a building? Where's the sense in that?

XI
They could have gone on to get good degrees,
Diplomas, whatnot, had a nice career
In ... tourism ... PR ... earned big fat fees
As lawyers - I don't know - it's clear
However, they considered life
A busted option. Nothing, not a wife
Nor kids, a nice house, lovely car,
Did anything to put life on a par

XII
With glorious death, a martyr's status, fast
Track access to the hash pipe, girls,
Boys, camels, whatnot, everlast -
- ing life in some big porno Disney World.
'Believing' stuff is one thing. Being sure
Is more than sentient minds can well endure,
Without that iron bubble, full of static,
Which is the inner world of the fanatic.

XIII
Fanatics come in many guises, and
Are all so boring, one can hardly bear
To peer behind the masks at minds as bland
As baby food, and stiff as hair
Upon a dead dog. All have three
Essential preconditions. First, that 'me'
Has split in warring factions, like a child
Whose lusts and fears cannot be reconciled,

XIV
Since both appear at once - like Edgar J
Wanting to fuck his Mommy, Adolf Hitler,
Who felt inferior in every way,
So made a world of people littler
Than him, and so on. For the split to heal,
The conflict is projected on the 'real'
World outside. This much is elementary.
Condition number two of this inventory

XV
Concerns capacity for blinkered will,
('Conviction', as it's sometimes wrongly known),
Belief that, once the stone's rolled up the hill,
There is another side to it, down which the stone
Will roll all by itself, leaving one free
And happy. (Sisyphus might see
That this was total bollocks, but fanatics
Are very rarely students of the Classics.)

XVI
The third condition is, there be a schism
That rends his native world from nave to chaps,
And nought to heal it but some magic 'Ism',
To put it where it was before its lapse
Of sovereignty: this, as of right,
Claims his entire devotion to the fight,
At mortal risk but with moral impunity:
Historical - you might say - Opportunity.

XVII
F'r example - one time in the Khyber Pass
And points west, the USS of R
(Remember them?) had tendered out to grass
An old regime of tribal chiefs, who far
From relishing retirement, or the spread
Of socialistic values, could be said
To have been bitterly agin the plan
To build New Moscow in Afghanistan.

XVIII
They might have gone on skirmishing for years,
- Who knows? - the tribesmen of that 'hood
Are weaned on knives and bullets, so one hears,
And so they might, or might not have made good
Their dark resolve to drag out by the ears
Th' invader, and then sent him home: it could
Have been a pretty even bet, but then,
As will occur when sporting gentlemen

XIX
Decide they have an interest in the race,
The odds got shortened: shortly, from the West
Began a flood of armaments - bombs, Mace,
Bazookas, bullets, rifles, armoured vests -
Whatever young guerillas, in their dreams,
Yearn after, bursting at the seams
With lethal knick knacks. Thus a bold new chap -
'The Fearless Freedom Fighter' (dressed by Gap).

XX
That freedom was the last thing on their minds,
Whose minds had ossified before the Flood,
Seemed to occur to no one. This, one finds
Quite often at those times when seas of blood
Pervade events, inviting to take sides
The couch potato hordes, whom the divide
Held spellbound for their full attention span,
'Twixt adverts for a film of Spiderman

XXI
And one for hamburgers. Opinion (natch)
Was pro the 'rebels' holding out against
The wicked Red Usurpers of their patch -
Though some good liberal folk sat on the fence,
Nobody minded them. (Who does?) Quite soon,
The cooking packed schedules of afternoon
TV were dotted with 'reports'
Of ambushes and firefights and all sorts

XXII
Of breathless first hand copy from the front,
(Or from the sides, or back). This video game,
Charade, live fox hunt from the POV of fox hunt
Saboteurs, while killing folk at that end, all the same
Brought scant disquiet to the great Front Room
Where Mighty Albion sleeps, as in his tomb:
'Consensus' gave the rebels the thumbs up,
Yawned, farted and went off to make a cup

XXIII
Of tea. Thus, nobody took pause
To think about the rebels' long term plans,
Nor (having so infantilised their cause)
Once thought them liable to bite the hand
That fed them guns and did not ask them back,
Which seems to argue quite a serious lack
Of foresight. Such austere, fanatic apes
(Who stone to death the victims of their rapes)

XXIV
As the Mujahideen, do not draw fine
Distinctions between this regime and that,
Save only that they're Western. They've no line
'Twixt Capital and Commie: lean or fat's
The only difference 'tween one Christian and another,
And never mind the fact our Soviet brothers
(Officially) were Atheist: all unbelieving scum
Should piss off to the hell from whence they come.

XXV
One wonders - did they actually believe,
Those CIA men, their own turgid spin
About 'brave tribesmen struggling to cleave
To ancient values'? Possibly. It's been
Observed before that hypocrites will often feign
Naivety: denial's far less pain -
- ful that way, not to say that lies
Shine less detectably from blinkered eyes.

XXVI
( This calls to mind the Holy Romanofs,
Whose secret polis funded restive Slavs, who,
Ruled by the Turks, wanted to throw them off,
(Or else by Austria - Hungary, what have you)
Which Slav subversives, to their mates in Rus,
Passed bullets, roubles, bombs and blunderbuss
With which to vaporise the Russian autocrat:
You'd think a sane policeman would have thought o' that.)

XXVII
At any rate, the Pentagon decision
To wish them God Speed with their bold regime
And fine old ways (like female circumcision),
Was made with no thought - or so it would seem -
That crucial to their bold new constitution
Was to promote that retro revolution
Sworn all of Western filth to drive away,
And next in line could be the USA.

XXVIII
And so it proved, at least after the start
Of one or two more wars, which in the main
Were testing ranges for the kind of smart
Bombs which killed half Iraq (except Hussein),
And generally seemed to piss about,
Without achieving half what they'd set out
To. Perhaps their stated aim
Was just a mask for some quite different game.

XXIX
Who knows? Do you? Does anyone? Do they
Who seem to have their fingers on the button?
Yes and no. They're very keen to play
At war, so long as the dead mutton's
Someone else. A serious imperial
Regime takes talents less ethereal:
With all their sturm und drang, they're far too hick
To really master realpolitik.

XXX
One consequence of their appalling lack
Of insight (though they've heaps of information)
Has been to make them subject to attack
From unexpected quarters: not a nation
In the true sense - still, a movement
Devoted (in this case) to the improvement
Of the Manhattan skyline: two big towers
(Which Warhol might have filmed for hours and hours

XXXI
Had they but then existed) reared above
All buildings in creation. Once you've said
That they were large you've then said everything - a love
Of size was all they meant - though now, there's dead,
Numbering ... well, counting them has been hard,
Since half will have been cleaners without Green Cards.
There's others too, who might have stayed alive
Had helicopters not failed to arrive.

XXXII
And don't forget the Pentagon - the News
Has been quite strangely reticent about
Something you'd think would prompt a million views,
And comment and analysis, and shouts
For resignation or reform - perhaps that's why
They'd rather let that bit of copy die -
Like Superman's abode got badly fried,
The while Clark Kent was jerking off inside.

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