Four War Poems

1.Friday, July 1940 A couple started enjoying a small aperitif Pre-lunch sherry in Aberdeen’s Canal Terrace The glasses shook as the blast blew up their garden Their piano entered their sitting room, uninvited The Heinkel bomber above them Flew like a bat out of hell, Spitfires in hot pursuit As it jettisoned a part of its deadly cargo. Hall Russell’s shipyard workers on their break Unwrapped their lunch, their rowies, or baps of spam Or stood to down a pint in the Neptune Bar Choosing a horse to back, a joke to tell Killed in droves as the bomber thundered on Ploughing into the Ice Rink near the river. The astonished dead were shipped by horse and cart Along the Denburn up to Woolmanhill A strange cortege of shoppers, children, fellow workers Witnessed their passing Death in July come swiftly, out of a clear sky. 2.Sea Side WW2 Fittie beachfront lined with ack-ack guns Rolls of barbed wire menacing the waves German sea mines washed ashore on the tide A wrecked flour mill, grain mixed with iron nuts A severed finger lying in the rubble. On Union Street, limbless & blind The veteran heroes of the last Great War Sat in the cold and wet Selling their matches, laces, Pleading for coppers to fill their daily plate. 3.April,1943 The death planes came from Denmark, south west Norway Searchlights strafed the city’s darkening skies The drone of German planes, stutter of guns These were the childrens’ wartime lullabies An ARP girl warden stood and screamed ‘The planes are coming! Hear the sirens’ noise! Miss Spicer lay beneath her primary school Her blackboard, desks, tossed round like playground toys Pregnant women hugged their precious bellies Bombed churchyards brought the hidden into sight A ghastly dance of death, strange resurrection When skeletons rose up to join the night 4.Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria Hair like a frightened badger Sad eyed moustached Franz Visited Sarajevo with his wife The Black Hand terror group had planned his killing The first two bottled out, armed to the teeth The third one lobbed a bomb, which bounced and missed Wounding twenty unintended victims The bomber, Cabrinovic, swallowed cyanide Jumped in the river Miljacka to die The poison made him vomit, and the river Was just four inches deep and almost dry Reaching the Town Hall, Franz called for his speech Wet with the blood of others, yet he read it. The tour continued onwards, as was planned. Gavrilo Princip stepped out from the crowd A teenage murderer, a young fanatic Too young too hang, too young to think of mercy And cooly fired his pistol into the car Hit in the jugular, Franz sat bolt upright His plumed hat tumbled off, green feathers falling His stricken wife, slumped with a belly of lead ‘It is nothing, it is nothing, it is nothing, ’ he said And then, the death rattle, The sound that plunged a whole world into war Albert from Brighton, George and Fred from Troon Millions who thought black hands were miners’ trademarks Millions who’d never heard of Sarajevo