Michael Brett, 'Blood'
Blood
The heart's an old gentleman with a bowler and pocket watch,
At the weekend a European king with
A cloth cap and bicycle. The body's his palace
And the blood his subjects. They commute
In tubeway capillaries, tunnels.
In war, the blood revolts, becomes platoons
Ransacking bodies, palaces, splashes walls, roads
Car windscreens. It acts at random,
Jumping in or out of people; grows cold
Or furious. Distress makes the noisy quiet,
The peaceful, rowdy. They shout out their lungs
In public bars, saying War is hell
Yet somehow they seem the greater for it.
By Michael Brett
The heart's an old gentleman with a bowler and pocket watch,
At the weekend a European king with
A cloth cap and bicycle. The body's his palace
And the blood his subjects. They commute
In tubeway capillaries, tunnels.
In war, the blood revolts, becomes platoons
Ransacking bodies, palaces, splashes walls, roads
Car windscreens. It acts at random,
Jumping in or out of people; grows cold
Or furious. Distress makes the noisy quiet,
The peaceful, rowdy. They shout out their lungs
In public bars, saying War is hell
Yet somehow they seem the greater for it.
By Michael Brett