Elegies For the Dead in Cyrenaica..

This afternoon I has having a coffee break and watching the tele. I was pretty disgusted to listen to someone in the Westminster parliament going on about "celebrating" the First World War. He talked as if it was something to celebrate, in the most glib and ridiculous manner.

So I switched off, and to keep me sane took down of copy of my late friend Hamish Henderson's magnificent war poems in Elegies For the Dead in Cyrenaica…from the second world war.

This first elegy, photographed here, contains some lines I dedicate to all those wanting to celebrate the outbreak of a war….

"What they regretted when they died had nothing to do with
race and leader, realm invisible,
laboured Augustan speeches or vague imperial heritage.
(They saw through that guff before the axe fell.)"