The poem below was written in response to the Katrina disaster of 2005. Poetry, as Keats famously pointed out, is about beauty and truth, in other words it is about life in all its aspects because there is no area of life where beauty and truth are irrelevant. All that we value in our lives is concerned with beauty and truth. That includes the relationship we have with our loved ones, with our fellow citizens and the world’s wider population. We are all in this together and we have rights and responsibilities as individuals under the charter of the United Nations.
So how should a poet engage with the world, a poet obsessed with love and beauty? The answer, I believe, is so simple, as William Burroughs would say: the poet is no different from anyone else, the poet should be engaged with his immediate circle and his wider world. Beauty and truth are synonyms. Lies are ugly. Poetry celebrates beauty and denounces ugliness and does so by employing the stylistic tricks of its trade, or should I say, of the medium, just as journalists do theirs, film makers theirs, artists theirs, musicians theirs. Politicians also have the tricks of their trade, and we should be wise to them. Always! Beauty is truth, truth beauty, that is all you need to know!
Paradise Lost
Your words,
Mr President, have grown charcoal-
brittle, they stain your lips
as you speak them, and bring no
comfort to those who hear;
let us
at the very least, carbon-date
your thoughts, your notion
of what is right and wrong,
your black-and-white
world,
we who have not drowned
but who looked on in horror
as you abandoned a people
who were surplus to
requirements!
Where were you when the saints
came marching in and the waters
rose and the wind howled and
the levees which had kept
despair
at bay were finally breached?
A serpent appeared in the rose
garden and said DO NOTHING
as your daddy did, surrender
dignity,
surrender truth and, as your
daddy had done, botox
the lies until you can smile
in the face of death,
turn up
your nose at the stench of decay,
turn a blind eye on the strangers
upon whose kindness your office
once depended. Democracy is in
the eye
of the beholder, but the dead are
disenfranchised. Katrina Katrina
to the tune of an old blues song, on
a blue piano, until the end of time.
6 September 2005