It’s clever how they’ve set this up:

A bowl of fruit,

A jar,

A china dog,

An iron bar (an iron bar?)

Behind – some crumpled remains,

The stench of rotting heaps

Of defenceless women and men.

Still, no one can see or smell this,

So that’s all right then.

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He won’t give a penny to help Ukraine;

He won’t lift a finger or part with change.

He wants his America ‘great again’

And thinks that such places are foreign and strange.

He won’t give a penny to help Ukraine;

He prefers to do favours for his mates:

Like jailbirds whose crimes are far from mundane,

And heads of authoritarian states.

He won’t give a penny to help U...

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Two years ago, we had no words,

Because words seemed superfluous.

Branded upon our consciousness,

All we needed was the image:

Each scorched mark would remind us

Of newly discovered horror.

But, in the end, the words returned;

Our memories demanded them.

A less reliable record,

Yet devastating for all that:

Shifting, changing, containing tears

As well as anger. Tha...

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They have made a mess of the house next door;

Mum, Dad, two kids and a cat are no more.

Can someone explain what they do this for?

Who knows? They just don’t like us, I suppose.

In years gone by, it was never like this;

We greeted, with a handshake or a kiss,

Our nearby friends. How has it gone amiss?

Who knows? They just don’t like us, I suppose.

It looks as thou...

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As you may have seen on the News and Features page, I have compiled a selection of fifty poems to mark the second anniversary of Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Some of these poems will be familiar to regular contributors, but a number have not yet featured on the WOL blog.

This is a private print and not available for general sale, but I would be pleased to send a free PDF copy by e-mail to anyb...

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Time, or what passes for time,

Is a culprit, most unkind,

Stealing what we find,

Emptying our mind.

Time should be the music

Which everybody plays,

Adding to our days

In unexpected ways.

But time is made of windows,

Shattered one by one in hate,

A commentary upon this state,

Where rescue parties come too late.

Time is the gun, time is the shell,

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‘Time passes,’ said the man at our table.

‘People want something new.’ I guess he’s right.

It's the prevailing theory round here.

‘The same old faces,’ opined another;

‘You know, Zelensky. Always wants money.’

And ‘here’ is anywhere, maybe everywhere.

Time passes. All of us know that feeling:

You turn a new page in a calendar

Or put away Christmas decorations.

At cricket...

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A morning to freeze the spirits.

As they shiver in hollowed times,
Workers stamp and spit used breath.

At the corner I see two men:

Their eyes wet from today’s bad news.

‘You can always tell,’ says my guide;

'They both had sons where it happened.'

I try to do an interview:

Get short shrift. Understandably.

As we leave, one of them calls out:

‘Poetry is dead. Art is dead...

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We queued at the supermarket;

I saw that everyone was dead.

And yet they were still standing.

Out of defiance? Contempt?

Perhaps just out of habit.

We queued at the bakery,

And in the rows of cakes

We saw the faces of the fallen:

Unmoved, at last at peace.

We queued at the bus stop.

A passer-by called out to us

And we called back,

But no one was alive

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The war’s cold exclusion has stripped out love.

Two years on, I stroll among the Bruegels;

The pictures dazzle in their joyless way,

Reflecting life’s treadmill of chores, horrors,

Its accommodations and its intrigues,

Its little stratagems for making do,

Not forgetting massacres and revenge.

I’ve read about the gas used at the front

To flush out choking soldiers marked for...

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You can spot the signs:

They talk of ‘hard-earned cash’,

And ‘putting our people first.’

We know what’s coming next:

‘Yes, the invasion was wrong,

But do we really….?’

Or, ‘why can’t they get together

And sort the whole thing out?’

Fatuous bewilderment

Is hardly an excuse.

It is so damned easy to say:

‘We expected some light

At the end of the tunnel’

When you...

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