Belated Lines to Ann Furedi Occasioned by Her Retirement as Chief Executive of the British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS)

This is my only ad hominem poem as far as I recall. I find Ann Furedi's justification of mass killing so obnoxious that, following the example of Shelley dashing off in haste "The Mask of Anarchy," I similarly rushed through this poem. It relies on immediacy for its effect.

   It was written after listening to Anne Furedi defend and extol abortion as a great achievement of women’s autonomy and career ambitions. She made no mention of the rights of the child or, indeed, of fathers. Particularly eye-widening were her admission that the unborn human has special status – but not special enough to save it from convenience killing, and her claim that there should be no laws whatever governing abortion (abortion up to birth being just one of those things). She is also on record as defending the killing of young girls in the womb in favour of boys, if the mother so desires. Such is today's murderous feminism.

   How ironic are our constant arguments about the mass immigration deemed necessary as a solution for the growing shortage of working age people in the British labour force. No mention is made that since abortion was legalized “for difficult cases only” in 1968 over ten million young British workers have been killed in the womb by the moral foulness of abortion – thus resulting in the current labour shortages and the rapid ageing of the population.
   “And what goes round goes round:” during the Covid pandemic abortion was returned to its “roots” when unsupervised home abortion by pills was made universally available. Inevitably, the casualty list of women needing emergency treatment for incomplete or botched abortions has soared. Back street abortion is once more a reality.
   We have ended up in the “civilized” post-Christian position of doing all we can to keep the elderly alive and all we can to kill as many young as possible. Is it a surprise that the judgement of God is upon the entire West?

   On a lighter note, I wrote another poem about a horror - "The Constant Companion" - in July 1980 and posted it on this blog on 1 March 2012. It is linked here.

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(Note: Ann Furedi retired as BPAS Chief Executive in December 2020 and is now Vice-Chair of the Governing Body of MidKent College of Higher and Further Education).

Since 1968
When killing in the womb
Became a “freedom” thing,
10 million in spate
Young British folk and true
Have fallen to their fate:
And that is why I sing
In praise of Ann Furedi.

In 2021
A quarter million plus
Of young in the womb’s spring
Were drugged or knifed to none;
The mothers, fraught, went home,
The slaughter slick and done:
And that is why I sing
In praise of Ann Furedi.

A “libertarian,”
Gradgrind in her logic,
The right to keep or sling
One’s child, for her is clarion;
Thus, that boys might live
Girls must become carrion:
And that is why I sing
In praise of Ann Furedi.

“The best job in the world”
She called her work at BPAS
Attracting the media’s bling –
Their approval blatant, birled,
For “record-breaking growth”
Was hers, like a black flag unfurled:
And that is why I sing
In praise of Ann Furedi.

Abortion policy,
She’s said, should be a blank,
A Wild West where money’s “ping”
Kills up to birth scot-free.
She’s helped at a late-term killing
Then slept all night like the sea:
And that is why I sing
In praise of Ann Furedi.

Well, Britain’s millions short,
We’re told, of working folk,
But that’s abortion’s sting –
There’s pint where should be quart:
At MidKent now, Mère Ann
Tempts the young to abort:
And that is why I sing
In praise of Ann Furedi.

And what goes round goes round:
Home aborts by pill –
What joy, the postman’s ring! –
Bring back to its old ground
Death with its cramps and blood –
Back street killing is crowned!
And that is why I sing
In praise of Ann Furedi.

And so, the self-demise
Of the West’s Christian fact
To which so few now cling
Results in Ba’al’s flies
Crawling the newborns’ faces
Exposed under pagan skies:
And that is why I sing
In praise of Ann Furedi.

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© May/June 2023

The Years Decay

The first line is obviously borrowed and adapted from Tennyson's marvellous poem, "Tithonus." The metre and rhyme are obvious, except that lines 4 and 5 in each stanza are trochaic with feminine endings.

   Another poem which sounds similar in tone to me, despite being written 43 years earlier, is "Winter's Ape," written in January 1980 and posted here on 11 December 2011.

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The years decay, the years decay and fall
And in an eyelid’s blink you find you’ve aged:
      The sea mist like a shawl,
   Clammy on your shoulders creeping,
   Stifles health to old man’s weeping,
      And rain that’s unassuaged
         Drops tears for all.

Sing songs of rue, sing songs of rue and cry:
The years were good, life’s pluses richly stored,
      And none might say that I,
   Love’s rewards betraying rashly,
   Peacock-strutting, glaired and brashly,
      Strange gods embraced, or whored
         From truth to lie.

But still this pain, but still this pain unstopped
Insists that love and mind’s appel have failed,
      And age, for which none opt –
   Epidermis dryly shrinking,
   Bowels aching as if kinking –
      Drains off like slops unpailed
         Which can’t be mopped.

Why cling to life, why cling to life and mourn?
Oh sun that’s warm upon the dew-dropped stone
      What agonies forlorn
   Scarify dark death’s wide marches,
   Skulled and boned in soil which parches?
      Unhoped, we sink alone,
      Mocked by death’s rictus-yawn.

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© May 2023

That Which I Would

Well, this poem is simple enough. In the ninth stanza "the Tarsan" is, of course, St Paul. There is a simple pattern of alternating feminine and masculine line endings throughout the poem.

   For something similar but different here's a link to "An Ending" which I wrote in trochaic tetrameters in December 1980 and posted on 7 November 2012.

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(Romans 7, 15-25, Douay-Rheims)

That which I would, I do not,
That which I would not, do;
And so I’ll dance to Hades
If it’s all the same to you.

St Paul knew all the struggle,
The sting which grouched his side,
But back-flayed at the pillar,
Or sunk in the sea’s wide tide,

He held to the unseen knowledge
Which unsat him on the road,
And like a stubborn palmer
Strove to the unmoved Node.

But I, and you! like clubbers
Sway to the swing of the groove;
Ecstatic, the sound deck’s pounding
Propels our every move:

Shouting, laughing, lusting,
We hog the floor on speed,
Faces and loins are sweat-soaked
Like metaphors for greed.

Ha! chastity you flat-foot,
I’ll game whoever I choose:
Lying, fawning – well-practised! –
Are tools for those on the cruise.

Be perfect, One said, like your Father,
He who sees all, and will judge,
Though pre-1960s fancies
Are but a social misfit’s grudge.

And here’s a jug of Jack Daniel’s,
Some “kick of a mule” pills,
There’s porn on my iphone in plenty,
All’s pluses, no nils!

Yes, I know about all the sorrow
Caverning the world’s face,
But hand-wringing like the Tarsan’s
Is not a social grace.

And as for the globes now spinning
Above our strobe-lit heads,
Relax, they’re safely hanging
By Damoclean threads!

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© April 2023

A Detestable Habit

The streets mentioned in this poem are the five main thoroughfares in Penzance - the granite Lyonesse of the west. Apart from the rhyme scheme the stanzas are patterned by alternating feminine and masculine line endings.

   For comparison here is a link to "The Lilies of the Valley," a ballad which I wrote in 1979 and posted on this blog on 1 March 2012. Incidentally, King Solomon's Mines remains a tremendous read - and to hell with political correctness.

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“...as I grow older I regret to say that a detestable habit of thinking seems to be getting a hold of me...” (Allan Quatermain in King Solomon’s Mines by H. Rider Haggard).

As I walked on the prom in the morning
Nodding to him and to her,
And the shopkeeper pulled out his awning,
Market Jew Street beginning to stir,
A sudden great horror enwhelmed me,
Cold as a wave of the sea,
   For a detestable habit of thinking
   Bounces me on its knee.

As if struck I froze in an anguish –
Ah, Sartre, Huysmans, de Sade! –
And Chapel Street started to languish
At the sun’s curdled aubade,
For life’s but an ill-willed hormone,
It starts, it’s lived, it’s flown,
   And a detestable habit of thinking
   Pierces me to the bone.

Futility and sadness
Torment even the little child,
In Causewayhead there’s madness
As the dead limp single-filed,
And tonight the moon will perish,
Throttled in its own wish,
   Oh a detestable habit of thinking
   Dangles me like a fish.

Well, the wind upon the mountains,
Like Life, will ever ring,
And words like spray from fountains
Through Bread Street will hiss and sting,
But the one unique loved other
Will die though balmed with myrrh,
   And this detestable habit of thinking
   Thrashes me like a cur.

Is the All but an absurd cipher,
A French farce that laughs to weep?
Does Sisyphus, the eternal lifer,
In Alverton Street beg for sleep?
Oh, I long to be a bourgeois,
Small-minded, safe below par,
   For this detestable habit of thinking
   Must mend but only to mar.

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© April 2023