Celfypridd

Repatriation

 

He stood in the darkness of the C-130’s hold

Time seemed to have stopped, a minute so slow

Waiting in the silence for the men outside to go

They’d come dressed to honour their friends

Standing to attention to give that last salute

To the fallen in coffins draped with union flags

 

He watched the Union Jack lowered to the ground

He stood to attention and listened to the padre’s words

He’d watched men stood stiff, heard the bugle blow

Holding themselves together for that final show

Each coffin carried into the planes steel hot hold

The ramp raised that silent blackness once  more.

 

It was that ground that we fell, he fell and he stayed

It’s that ground, that sandy soil and the dried out dust

That fills your eyes, your ears, nose, socks and boots

Fills the deep heart of you, your spirit and your soul

It never leaves wherever you are, wherever you go

It’s the darkness, the memories, the joy and the loss.

 

It is the brightness of that dawn, that sky, our hopes

It never leaves wherever you are, wherever we go.

 

RAC

 

 

 

 

 

Mikhail Bulgakov couldn’t have made it up

Ilmi Umerov the former vice premier of Crimea

The leader of the Crimean Tartars

Committed to a psychiatric institution

For expressing his concerns

He suffers diabetes

A heart condition and Parkinsons

So withdraw medication.

Seems sensible.

And so we await

the appearance of The Master

And of strange happenings that suggest

That evil may be taking charge of reality

The return of the magician,

Of Koroviev,

That black cat Behemoth,

Azazello and Abadonna,

Not to forget the witch Hella.

No that would stretch the imagination

A stretch too far

Russia is up to date

A modern society

There is no room for Satan

Superstition or evil

Such things could not happen

In Putin’s modern Russia.

 

RAC