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MD

ROSEBUD

‘It is the most humble day of my life,’ Rupert Murdoch

 

Beech trees, in full leaf, more than a hundred years

high in the park a street away from here,

rise sheer like raggedy cliffs, a last hurrah

of pragmatic philanthropy – like Rome

before the fall – amid the indifferent

splendour of empire: town halls designed

like palaces, museums like town halls.

It dies spluttering in Flanders mud, choking

in dugouts on Gallipoli’s cliffs.

 

Rupert Murdoch’s dad, a Sydney Sun (sic)

hack, who had the ears, surprise surprise,

of politicos north and south, exposed

Anzac carnage on Ottoman shores,

and brought the boys back just after Christmas –

so doing good through cunning, his means

justified by his goal, the goal always right.

 

As Citizen Kane aka Randolph Hearst –

one of the first tycoons of the gutter press,

war monger, dirt disher, future mangler –

lay dying, “Rosebud,” was the last he said:

a small, wooden sledge, the name in floral white,

his curtailed childhood tangible among the

vast, serried desert of his acquisitions.

 

High above the beeches of St James Park

the Dirty Digger watches from his penthouse

as white pelicans – a gift from Russia

for Charles II, who knew a thing or two

about dads – rise from the lake in the park,

fly towards the Palace then wheel back

over Horse Guards and the MOD,

the birds – their call a grunt and a whine – for some,

a symbol of the Passion on the Cross.

The Breaker of the English-speaking world plots

what lie he will tell Death.

 

 

Note: the poem has subsequently been published in EAP: THE MAGAZINE Winter 2012: Errors of the Gods – https://exterminatingangel.com/rosebud/

SEASONAL GREETINGS

Door, Marrakech © SCES 2009



GUBBIO, WINTER 1992


Where the tourist buses turned, the Werhmacht

had murdered partisans – La Piazza

di Martiri Quaranti.  The cold from the hill –

old, old rock – rose from the cathedral’s floor

into our very soles. Outside, February seemed mild,

seasoned with wood smoke. We bought a hand thrown,

hand painted jar with an ill fitting lid.


Since then: earthquakes, marriages…



GUILDFORD, SPRING 1998


Beneath the new Dillons in Guildford,

a mediaeval chamber, disclosed

during the refurbishment,

had been preserved.

Some archaeologists claimed

it was built as a synagogue:

others denied it.

Dillons’ MD was a Jew

the local paper informed us.


The peoples of the book misread each other.



THE CAPTAIN TILLY MEMORIAL PARK, QUEENS, SUMMER 2001


The Goose Pond was green with insecticide:

the West Nile mosquito threatened.

Named for the scion of a local family –

mutilated by Filipino freedom fighters

a century before – the Park was playground

for the replacements of the ‘teeming masses’:

Hispanics, Afro-Caribbeans, Asians.


From Memorial Hill, you could see the Twin Towers.



HOOLE, AUTUMN 2009


Two aging lovers, best friends in all the world,

orphaned late in life, walked circuits of the park

for their hearts; smiled at mums pushing buggies, scowled

at druggies near the gate; talked of ghosts and hope –

and jokes: ‘What’s this fly doing?’ ‘Waving, waving!’


Old lovers count their blessings, side by side.