Hopework-l Mailing List: A poem about peace for President Bush, from the poet laureate of Britain

[John Wallace (walla003]

Dear folk school folks,

The Manchester Guardian yesterday published several letters from its
readers to President Bush on the occasion of his visit to Britain.

Harold Pinter wrote an extraordinarily short, bitter, and to me violent
letter that Tom Friedman quotes in his column in the New York Times
this morning.  I am not going to repeat it here.

Andrew Motion, the current poet laureate, also contributed a letter, a
poem about peace. I am pasting it in below.

John Wallace


Dear President Bush,

The child who has lost his arms

thought he was catching a ball

when the bomb his enemies dropped

bounced through his dapper hall.

Look at him here in his bed

washed by the camera glare:

the world must know what happened,

and show how truly it cares.

Was it in fact his foes

who threw this thing in his house?

Or was it perhaps his friends -

hence their exceptional fuss?

Guilt is the great disguiser,

blacking the white of the sun.

One thing we know for sure:

the ball goes bouncing on.
Andrew Motion
Poet laureate