The age of barbarity

 For AJ

You with your radical innocence
did not ask for this daily display
of stupidity and error
this war that is not really a war –
our conscience has been privatized.

We have replaced the old terror
with a new state of anxiety.
our words have lost their power
through the currency of lies.
We have been infantilised.

Here, we are remote from the horror.
You love your silver scooter.
I follow you carefully to the shops

Your eyes as dark as the deepest pools 

draw mine from the pavement and road

 

Mornings with AJ

The radio tells us of sun and showers.

It talks of the Yazidi genocide –
a kaleidoscope of global powers –

and a famous comedian’s suicide.

Reflecting upon ‘British values’

I cross the giant’s kingdom of Sainsbury’s

to buy your Snickers and vinegar fries.

It’s a dilemma. What on earth are they?

When should we act and when turn aside?

You are far more interested in toys

than the slaughter on a mountainside

or the tortured comedian’s woes.

To the bipolar blink of light and dark

we wake and sleep. We walk across the car park.

The feather and the drum

https://soundcloud.com/william-anthony-hatchett/the-feather-and-the-drum


With(Am) army boots upon (D) their feet
They (Em) left their home in Tamworth Street
(Am) Frank joined first, the (D) infantry
(G) Although his trade was carpentry

(B7) Bullies and the lies of crowds
(Em) Used the feather and the drum
To (Am) take their lives and (D) blow them out
(G) But we will remember them

V2
He had a daughter and a wife
He bid farewell to his old life
An empty place now he was gone
It was the turn of brother Tom

C
Bullies and the lies of crowds
Used the feather and the drum
To take their lives and blow them out
But we will remember them
 
V3
With gun and mortar, plank and bomb
They served their country Frank and Tom
It was a plan that could not fail
A final push for Passchendaele


C
They were not born for smoke and mud
For shrapnel or for fields of blood
A butchers’ s war extinguished them
They died at Ypres and Pilckem
 
C
Bullies and the lies of crowds
Used the feather and the drum
To take their lives and blow them out
But we will remember them



Note: two relatives, on my father’s side, Frank and Tom Hatchett, brothers from Lichfield in Staffordshire served in the First World War. Frank was a private in the 16^th battalion of the Sherwood Foresters (the Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire Regiment), Tom was a sapper in the Royal Engineers. They both died during the Third Battle of Ypres, in 1917. Frank on the 20^th of September and Tom on the 10^th of October