Deathly Diversions

It's time -- but then, it's always time -- for a poem by the great Denise Levertov. Of Welsh Anglican and Russian Jewish origin, she was brought up (like me) in Ilford. In fact, she is the only person I know to have written a poem about Valentines Park.

She emigrated to the USA in her early twenties, and became a leading feminist and anti-war poet. This example, written at the height of the Vietnam War, is still powerful and relevant.

Deathly Diversions

In dark slick as

plastic garbage bags,

spotlights play, color of

canned grapefruit juice . ..

Half-heroes totter

into the glare:

America,

stalking its meat,

pounces.

Each time

the same meal, monotony

of lead-tasting blood.

Catharsis blocked, America

chokes on its own

clotted tears. It is millions,

each a loner.

Meanwhile,

bellies keep swelling,

limbs dwindle

to bone, famine

drags its feet over continents.

And meanwhile,

screened from half-heroes' ritual mourners

by smoke of their little fires,

their beguiled attention fixed

on dead phantasmal presidents,

innocuous dead singers,

and unheard while they wail, ‘give peace a chance,’

vaster catastrophes

are planned.