EP&M Editorial Reply to Britain's Poet Laureate

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REPLY TO ANDREW MOTION'S "REGIME CHANGE"
                    by Sonny Williams


Silly, silly Andrew Motion
With misplaced, left-wing devotion

Fears the ancient things we know
Suffer now from death's cruel blow;

Names of places are now dying
In their fragile cradles, implying

Eden's fruit is pure and sweet;
Tigris runs with child-like feet;

Baghdad's born of innocence;
Such thought rejects all common sense.

Baghdad, Basra, Babylon,
Themselves were cities built upon

Persian, Hebrew, Assyrian blood,
Battles waged for gods and mud.

Nabopolassar had laid
Niniveh in ruins, then bade

Nebuchadnezzar, his son, take rule.
Hanging Gardens kept him cool.

Weren't those very gardens built
From the spoils of war, blood spilt?

Wasn't war-torn Jerusalem
Raped, ransacked, for gold and gem?

Later assailed by Mongol, Turk,
Still, those names survived the murk.

Could poor Andrew really think
Culture's formed without a stink?

Motionless, Andrew would see
Marble courts while drinking tea,

Rather than a people's lot
Worsen under a despot.

Star-tipped minarets mean shit
When you're being stomped and whipped.

Pain and conflict always lurk;
Humanity is bloody work.

P.S. a note upon his verse,
(I'm sorry, but it does get worse)

It's just not right to use Death's name
And fill his mouth with lines so lame,

For Death is smart; he's not a sap.
He'd never rhyme "up" with "crap."

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