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Just as the Devil doesn't have all the best songs (just most of them) , so the genuine protest song is not the exclusive preserve of the political Left. Kipling's reputation as a right-wing imperialist has discoloured his posthumous reputation as a writer but this excerpt from his poem Mesopotamia 1917 , published in a collection of 1919 , wouldn't have been out of place among the anti-war lyrics of the 1960s protest kids.
They shall not return to us , the resolute, the young ,
The eager and whole-hearted whom we gave.
But the men who left them thriftily to die in their own dung ,
Shall they come with years and honour to the grave ?
Our dead shall not return to us while Day and Night divide -
Never while the bars of sunset hold.
But the idle-minded overlings who quibbled while they died ,
Shall they thrust for high employments as of old ?
Shall we only threaten and be angry for an hour ?
When the storm is ended shall we find
How softly but how swiftly they have sidled back to power
By the favour and contrivance of their kind ?
Even while they soothe us , while they promise large amends ,
Even while they make a show of fear ,
Do they call upon their debtors , and take counsel with their friends ,
To confirm and re-establish each career ?
Their lives cannot repay us - their death could not undo -
The shame that they have laid upon our race.
But the slothfulness that wasted and the arrogance that slew ,
Shall we leave it unabated in its place ?
In a 1942 essay , George Orwell observed that it may be in order to admit that Kipling “is a jingo imperialist
and is morally insensitive , and then try to find out why he survives while the refined people who sniggered at him seem to wear so badly.” George suggests that his poems are full of rhyming
proverbs , that he was the only writer of his time whose work added phrases to the English language. East is East and West is West. What do they know of England who only England know ? The
female of the species is more deadly than the male. He travels the fastest who travels alone. Somewhere East of Suez.
A number of prominent authors later joined Kipling in the dock , on charges of embracing undemocratic (actually predemocratic) opininons …. Céline , Hamsun , Ezra Pound , Wyndham Lewis , Heidegger. Pick out the shmendrik from the schnorrer ,
the shyster from the shlemeil. About-turns in attitudes have separated their sensibilities from ours but we feel obliged to sit in judgement on them nevertheless. Facts and fictions inform each other as
the modern thumb turns decisively downwards. Intrinsic to every instance of such historical tut-tutting is the implied superiority of our fairer world but in truth , that 'fairer' world is reversing all
of the previous policies that were designed to even out wealth distributions. We inhabit a globe that encourages corporations and those at the high upper end of the wealth spectrum to bestow either their
scorn or their pity rather than their offshore taxes on the growing multitudes down at the lower end …. a postdemocratic arrangement , we might say.
Wig
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Archive
Poets' Corner #1 – Poetic Pessimism, 13th September 2012
Poets' Corner #2 – The Workman's Friend, 10th October 2012
Poets' Corner #3 – On The Trail of Two Dylans, 12th November 2012
Poets' Corner #4 – Omar Khayyam, 14th December 2012
Poets' Corner #5 – William Blake, 25th January 2013
Poets' Corner #6 – A Minor Poet, 19th February 2013
Poets' Corner #7 – Thomas Hardy, 20th March 2013
Poets' Corner #8 – Shakespeare's Sonnets, 21st April 2013
Poets' Corner #9 – Edward Thomas, 20th May 2013
Poets' Corner #10 – Harry Smith's Anthology, 19th June 2013
Poets' Corner #11 – William Plomer, 21st July 2013
Poets' Corner #12 – Ghosts , 20th August 2013
Poets' Corner #13 – William Dunbar, 20th September 2013
Poets' Corner #14 – Bathtub Thoughts, 20th October 2013
Poets' Corner #15 – Bagpipe Music, 20th November 2013
Poets' Corner #16 – Sylvia & Emily, 20th December 2013
Poets' Corner #17 – The Fall Of Icarus, 16th January 2014
Poets' Corner #18 – Those Gone Before, 20th February 2014
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