The 1st stanza asks a question to which the answer is, of course, “No”. John Milton wrote Areopagitica, an argument against censorship.

Sadly, in the Britain of 2025, poets, artists, journalists, religious leaders and The Man on the Clapham Omnibus now face routine harrassment by the UK Government and the police, enduring arrest and imprisonment without charge or trial: and for what? for opposing the crimes of Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing.

 

The 9th line is my interpretation of Lady Macbeth’s words in Gaeilge (Irish). Unlike the gutless UK shower, the Irish government “grew a spine” and effectively expelled the Israeli Ambassador.

“Imigh! smál damnaithe! póg mo thóin!”

In English that’s:

“Out! damned spot! kiss my arse!”

 

 

 

 

Would Milton cower beneath barbarian fists

of tyrants who despise and fear the truth,

who’d Art and Beauty banish to that abyss

from whence, feart grovelling bards spout lies uncouth?

Brave workers once, on Cable Street advanced

The Struggle: that all in brotherhood unite:

Jihaad demands eternal vigilance:

our Intifada battles fascist blight.

Imigh! smál damnaithe! póg mo thóin!       

Thou foul Ambassador for Genocide:

Death-dealing drudge with bloodless heart of stone,

Whose hands stain Britain’s shores with blood-red tide.

Up anchor! make sail with your Tool of Tools

Whose spinning compass dooms his Ship of Fools.

 

Le Uilleam Ó Ceallaigh, Déardaoin,  an ceathrú déag lá de mhí Lúnasa, dhá mhíle agus cúig is fiche (14/8/2025)