Exit wounds

With the conflict in Afghanistan escalating and the Iraq inquiry pending, poet laureate Carol Ann Duffy commissions war poetry for today


Carol Ann Duffy The Guardian, Saturday 25 July 2009



Poets, from ancient times, have written about war. It is the poet's obligation, wrote Plato, to bear witness. In modern times, the young soldiers of the first world war turned the horrors they endured and witnessed in trench combat - which slaughtered them in their millions - into a vividly new kind of poetry, and most of us, when we think of "war poetry" will find the names of Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon coming first to our lips, with Ivor Gurney, Isaac Rosenberg, Rupert Brooke ... What passing-bells for these who die as cattle? ... There's some corner of a foreign field ... Such lines are part of the English poetry reader's DNA, injected during schooldays like a vaccine.


But other poems - not all by soldiers - also come to mind: Walt Whitman's civil war poems; the poetry of Anna Akhmatova and Osip Mandelstam, written (or memorised) during the Stalinist terrors; Lorca's poems from the Spanish civil war; the poems of the brilliant young Keith Douglas who was killed in the second world war; the poetry of Zbigniew Herbert from eastern Europe and Mahmoud Darwish from the Middle East, and of Seamus Heaney and Michael Longley from Northern Ireland.


British poets in our early 21st century do not go to war, as Keith Douglas did and Edward Thomas before him. They might be poet-journalists like James Fenton, the last foreign correspondent to leave Saigon after it fell to the Viet Cong in 1975, or electrifying anti-war performance poets, like the late Adrian Mitchell, or brilliant retellers of Homer's Trojan wars, like Christopher Logue. War, it seems, makes poets of soldiers and not the other way round. Today, as most of us do, poets largely experience war - wherever it rages - through emails or texts from friends or colleagues in war zones, through radio or newsprint or television, through blogs or tweets or interviews. With the official inquiry into Iraq imminent and the war in Afghanistan returning dead teenagers to the streets of Wootton Bassett, I invited a range of my fellow poets to bear witness, each in their own way, to these matters of war.





In Times of Peace
by John Agard

That finger - index to be exact -
so used to a trigger's warmth
how will it begin to deal with skin
that threatens only to embrace?

Those feet, so at home in heavy boots
and stepping over bodies -
how will they cope with a bubble bath
when foam is all there is for ambush?

And what of hearts in times of peace?
Will war-worn hearts grow sluggish
like Valentine roses wilting
without the adrenalin of a bullet's blood-rush?

When the dust of peace has settled on a nation,
how will human arms handle the death of weapons?
And what of ears, are ears so tuned to sirens
that the closing of wings causes a tremor?

As for eyes, are eyes ready for the soft dance
of a butterfly's bootless invasion?

Listen
by Gillian Clarke

to the chant that tranced me thirty years ago
in Samarkand: the call to prayer at dawn;

to that voice again, years and miles from then,
in the blood-red mountains of Afghanistan;

to the secret placing of a double-bomb
at a dark hour in a Helmand street;

to the first foot to tread the viper's head,
the scream that ripped the morning's rising heat;

to the widow's wail as she crouches in the rubble
over a son, a brother torn apart;

to a mother dumb with shock who locks her door
and sits alone, taking the news to heart;

to the soldier's words, "It's World War One out here";
to the rattled air, the growl of the grenade;

to a chanting crowd fisting the foetid air;
to a silent Wiltshire town at a last parade;

to ruin ripening in poppy fields;
to barley burnished in the summer air;

to the sound at dusk, cantata of despair,
the holy call become a howl of prayer.

War on Terror
by Fred D'Aguiar

Lasts for as long as nightmares
paint behind the eyelids

as long as a piece of string
cut from a navel remains buried under a tamarind tree

as long as radar from a whale
sounds like my child crying in her sleep

not long after the eyes wash away
last nights paint

no longer than a piece of string
tied at a navel

shorter than this war in this time under
this government that drowns our children in their sleep

Untidiness
by Amanda Dalton
The National Museum of Iraq, Baghdad

Some time after the looting, the locked gates,
the US tank stood idle in a gallery,

Mushin Hasan, his head bowed
in a room of shattered stone,

after some had come back in blankets,
dustbin bags, the boots of cars,

in pieces - the Bassetki Statue, pulled
from a cesspool, smeared with grease -

and others recovered from Jordan, Italy,
France, US, UK, Peru, eBay,

they re-opened the museum,

missing maybe 3 or 11,000
(depending what you read), missing

the Hatra Heads, the Nimrud Lioness,
and doubting they'll ever get them back,

those bits of the world,
bits of the civilised world, scattered.

• "Untidiness" is how the then secretary of defence, Donald Rumsfeld, described the looting from the Iraq National Museum.

Big Ask
by Carol Ann Duffy
(In memory of Adrian Mitchell)

What was it Sisyphus pushed up the hill?
I wouldn't call it a rock.
Will you solemnly swear on the Bible?
I couldn't swear on a book.
With which piece did you capture the castle?
I shouldn't hazard a rook.

When did the President give you the date?
Nothing to do with Barack!
Were 1200 targets marked on a chart?
Nothing was circled in black.
On what was the prisoner stripped and stretched?
Nothing resembling a rack.

Guantanamo Bay - how many detained?
How many grains in a sack?
Extraordinary Rendition - give me some names.
How many cards in a pack?
Sexing the Dossier - name of the game?
Poker. Gin Rummy. Blackjack.

What's your understanding of 'shock' and 'awe'?
I didn't plan the attack.
Once inside the Mosque, describe what you saw.
I couldn't see through the smoke.
Your estimate of the cost of the War?
I had no brief to keep track.

Where was Saddam when they found him at last?
Maybe holed under a shack.
What happened to him once they'd kicked his ass?
Maybe he swung from the neck.
The WMD ... you found the stash?
Well, maybe not in Iraq.

The Grassington Mandala
by Ian Duhig

The photograph, a monk explains,
shows statues once in Bamiyan;
near here the Pilgrimage of Grace
fought Bluff King Henry's Taliban,

where now enlightened refugees
rebuild their Buddha's house in sand,
a sand once ground from precious stones;
they laugh, now statue-dust's as sound.

The sun and moon attend his throne
surrounded by five jewelled walls;
a foursquare palace circles both
(with, on its roof, white parasols),

then rosaries of thunderbolts,
and rainbow-serpent aureoles;
each high brocaded gate supports
two kneeling deer with dharma wheels.

This Mitrukpa Mandala's power,
to these who travel with belief,
absolves the karma of who kill
or are involved in taking life.

The RAF train overhead -
Jihadists also, up the Dale;
a homeless monk with steady hands:
another serpent bites its tail.

Landlock
by Matthew Hollis

Rain came rarely to the white wood valley.
In between times, he did what he could,
cut rhubarb and gooseberries, brought flowers
from the hill: camel-thorn in winter, rest-harrow
in summer, rock-rose, barberry, mimosa.
He ground wormwood to settle her fever.
When the trouble was done he would take back the farm,
plant olive and cedar, build her a home.
But she thought mostly of the sea -
the uncommissioned sea -
wild at her, salt strong -
not the starving river, brackish and torn -
a river is never enough.
One of her wishes was to find her own path,
but the lowlands were locked down, the plains undone;
so they climbed, and climbed as one.
And when she could not walk he carried her
and when he could not carry her she walked.
Such as this the days went by, till his strength too was sapped.
He laid his back against the longer rock
and set her head that gently in his lap.
Sleep overtook them on the slope.
He woke to take the sunlight in his eyes
and could not see at first the greater distance,
the strange blue, stain blue light in the distance,
that seemed every bit to move, impossible, surely,
a thin drawn band of sea, somewhere meeting sky.
He raised her head that she might see it done.
But where she was she had already gone.

Descent
by Alan Jenkins

... when suddenly out of that lake of blood
And plasma and the seepings of old sores
And indistinct stuff, rotted flesh and mud
And floatings of chemical froth, the spores
From carrion-flowers, the bandages that dressed
Deep-tissue wounds acquired in recent wars,
Moment-of-death evacuations (deliquesced),
The slippery insides of bodies cut in two,
Brain-matter, bits of muscle and the rest -
Three bubble-streams rose up; then from this stew
Appeared, slime-covered, plop plop plop, three heads,
All familiar. Each seemed about to spew
But more muck filled their open mouths, and threads
Of mucus clung and dripped from them as all
Were forced to swallow back those strange sweetbreads.
And so their words came thickly though a wall
Of vile breath and the noises that each made
In struggling to be heard: "I [burp] now call
On our great nation, and the mighty shade
Of Winston ... [awk!] Churchill [blurp] ... I mean, look ..."
"Perhaps you dickheads think" - a fierce tirade
Came now from his confrere - "that this [blurf. Flook!]
War will be some kind - of fucking - picnic -
Though we could just make out a Don! or Dick!
Among his snarls of petulant disdain
And "DON'T MISUNDERESTIMATE ME" (sic)
He shrieked, futilely fending off a rain
Of liquid shit expelled in passing by
A bony old man with a baggy stain
For underpants, long matted beard, wild eye.
"To satisfy their vanity", my guide said,
A million, two million forsaken had to die.
Now they must squabble in this place instead,
But no lies they repeat will justify
Their crimes, or earn forgiveness from the dead ... "

Inquiry
by Carola Luther

how close how far how deep
what shade what shape what height
these quiet skulls like eggs how old
how wide one hundred thousand
which angle which side
the walls fall slowly as if half asleep
stepping out of clothes what's heard
what's said her stained abaya
from where from when
miles for water what's dug up
who's missing who's quiet
their bed in the crater by the park
what number what cost on the step a baby
his sucking mouth what's named what's lost
on the rubbish mound two girls in black
looking for nylon and Pepsi cans
what's counted what's hidden
what's not documented the boy still searching
for the head of his dog what's shredded
what's kept which contractor who's job
in the city darkness electric switch click
click who's friend who's father which cellar
which jail underground the oil what email
one perfect apricot in the flattened orchard
who's dental record who's record beneath
a new sim-card painkillers ninety nine
prayer beads which faction which cabal
sometimes she tries to get to school
that firm which consortium at the widow's stall
petrol by the cup tissues chewing gum
who's ring who's tongue left by the road
in his mascara khol private clothes
what's stolen what's found
a Sumerian statue from the flipflop man
what's ignored inside there were ants
what's replayed the Sony camcorder
whirring like a watch under her bhurka
that's intact what's standing what story
what rumour sepsis making its yellow flower
which fact which faith just tea and dates
tea and dates and three small onions
my son has gone the teacher's leaving
which airport which building
quiet men meeting

After the Stealth Bomber
by Robert Minhinnick
(Umm Ghada at the Amiriya Bunker)

It is years later now
but time can also run backwards.
Still she squats in candlelight,
Umm Ghada in the caravan,
or in 125 degrees Fahrenheit,
a cockroach ticking on her divan.

At night
they come out of the bunker,
the children, the old people,
but all a fog of flesh.
one body with four hundred souls
is exposed in a photographic flash.
They pick the wedding rings and wisdom teeth
from crematorium ash.

Who was it dreamed a stealth bomber?
Stealth steals.
Think of a smart bomb.
Not so smart.
Where the missiles entered Amiriya
daylight was star-shaped in the sarcophagus,
the concrete blasted back,
all the bodies foaming like phosphorus
in a bunker in Iraq.

The old women
took off their shoes
to welcome the fire that jumped into their mouths.
How quickly the children
found themselves unborn.

Yes, stealth steals.
But still Umm Ghada
guards. Umm Ghada
who goads God
with her grief
and the ghosts she carries,
Umm Ghada my guide
in the charnel house corridors.

What is she but a woman
in desert black.
Yet no desert was ever so black
as the sackcloth that Umm Ghada owns.
Not the Syrian desert's
Bedouin black, its cairns
of cold stones.

• The Amiriya bunker in Baghdad was destroyed by the USAF on 13 February 1991. More than 400 civilians wer killed. Umm Ghada, lost manymembers of her family in the destruction, became a guide at Amiriya, living on the site. I met her there in September 1998. Her whereabouts today are unknown.

Afghanistan
by Paul Muldoon

It's getting dark, but not dark enough to see
An exit wound as an exit strategy.

Have I Got Old News For You
by Daljit Nagra

You've been mapping the best mortgage
for our first house in these skint times,
recalling the latest tracker rate
you hint we play it safe
with a five-year fixed.

You're by the telly when Dubya flashes up
twitching a smirk in his cowboy gear,
now safely in the past, yet verged
on a mind-blowing
thought.

I'm sorry Love, in the head to head,
my head had gone astray so you were
second best, it's just that I banked
on a dead cert gaffe to raise
us a laugh.

You don't hand me another Bud, but quiz
my smiles at this sniggery ad-lib game
of gags (that won your broken
laughter back then).
I'm thrown

to our courtship years glued to the smoke of Guan-
tanamoww, Eyraaq, and of course Affghanestaan
freed by John Simpson for the Crusades,
way before our daughter
trod the earth.

Of Course If I Can Help in Any Way
by Sean O'Brien

May we begin? Please tell us what you said
Or did, or saw the others do or say
Or see, or write, or somehow intimate.
We're anxious to be clear on all the facts.
... But no. You think it's wiser if instead
You don't do that. You haven't got all day.
How could we grasp the interests of the state,
The angel-subtleties its work exacts?
Are we suggesting you might swerve
From righteousness? Why should we need to know?
Who do we think we're talking to like this
When - okay, look - God's asked you to preserve
His plans from scrutiny? You smile. You go.
Outside your creatures queue to take the piss.

Battle Lines
by Carole Satyamurti

They wear the same boots, the same touching hair-cuts,
they're smiles on the News, digits on print-out,
our brave boys;
names, ranks and numbers, action men
splitting the night with mind-trash noise.

Below them, the lights are the Fourth of July,
the screen shows cursors falling, converging
on other brave men -
abstract enemies with blanks for faces.
The mission's to smash them and smash them again.

Each leader works at poses, inflections:
strong on screen, bluff on the air-waves,
caring friend.
Each of them bathes in his own propaganda;
his currency's lives, and he's plenty to spend.

It's no use praying for some clean ending,
the God of the cross, of the star, of the crescent
is deaf and blind.
The fall-back, an echo of voices from childhood:
Don't cry big boys. Never mind.

St Brides
by Jo Shapcott

There is a tower of the winds as tall
as this one in another city, a steeple
filled with fire by the incendiary raids
of a coalition of the unwilling. Nocturnal
shocks pound the citizens who survive,
blast them out of their beds into the streets,
children bundled under their arms. The gutters flame.
Dust is alight. I was born in a city

to come and go safely through the boroughs,
carrying inside me every morning's news: pictures
of soldiers in places they didn't want
to understand, made to fight for loose change,
for the hell of it, for a can of oil. I live here,
but the smell of print and ashes is in my nose.

It could have been
by Clare Shaw

Ali, son of Abdul. 16 months.
Rocket on house, Sadr City 16.5.2009.

Ali, but for some detail of history,
this day could have been yours.
It could have been you this morning,
stood at the end of your bed,
eyes still shut, arms held up for your mother,
who makes sun and all things possible,
who could, little Ali, be me.

Tony Edward Shiol, 5 years.
Kidnapped, found strangled, Shikan 12.05.2009.

If God had sneezed or been somehow distracted.
If that ray of light had shifted
and you had landed
with that small, metallic thrill of conception
as I walked down Euston Road,

then this could have been your morning.
It could have been me inhaling
your breath straight from sleep,
the smell of hot lake and woodsmoke, could
have
been
my tired arm under your neck.

Unnamed baby son of Haider Tariq Sain.
Car bomb, Nawab Street, Baghdad 7.04.2009.

It could have been you
shouting "carry"
at the far top stair of my stairs -

hello stairs
hello breakfast

- your feet in these shoes
which do not contain ants;

Unnamed daughter of Captain Saada Mohammed Ali.
Roadside bomb, Fallujah 20.4.2009.

biting soap
which smells good
but does not taste; watching
the unsteady wonder of bubbles;
throwing water up into the light.

Unnamed child of Haidar, male, aged 4.
Suicide bomber, Baghdad 4.1.2009.

then swimming:
your body held out in my hands;
the pear-shaped
weight of your head
safe away from the pool's sharp side

Sa'adiya Saddam, aged 8, female.
Shot dead by USA forces. Afak, 7/8 Feb, 2009.

It could have been me on that street
with you in my hands
and my hands red and wet
and my face is a shriek
and my voice is a house all on fire

But for geography,
but for biology,
but for the way
things happen,
it could have been

Unnamed female baby of the Abdul-Monim family.
Shot dead, Balal Ruz 22.1.2009.

you falling,
you holding your hand up for kissing.

Poppies
by Jane Weir

Three days before Armistice Sunday
and poppies had already been placed
on individual war graves. Before you left,
I pinned one onto your lapel, crimped petals,
spasms of paper red, disrupting a blockade
of yellow bias binding around your blazer.

Sellotape bandaged around my hand,
I rounded up as many white cat hairs
as I could, smoothed down your shirt's
upturned collar, steeled the softening
of my face. I wanted to graze my nose
across the tip of your nose, play at
being Eskimos like we did when
you were little. I resisted the impulse
to run my fingers through the gelled
blackthorns of your hair. All my words
flattened, rolled, turned into felt,

slowly melting. I was brave, as I walked
with you, to the front door, threw
it open, the world overflowing
like a treasure chest. A split second
and you were away, intoxicated.
After you'd gone I went into your bedroom,
released a song bird from its cage.
Later a single dove flew from the pear tree,
and this is where it has led me,
skirting the church yard walls, my stomach busy
making tucks, darts, pleats, hat-less, without
a winter coat or reinforcements of scarf, gloves.

On reaching the top of the hill I traced
the inscriptions on the war memorial,
leaned against it like a wishbone.
The dove pulled freely against the sky,
an ornamental stitch. I listened, hoping to hear
your playground voice catching on the wind.