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ARTS AND CULTURE

Eighty years of tarnish

29 September 2020

Selected poems

A valley in Spain

for Juan Carlos Jiménez

In 1937, during the Spanish Civil War, the Battle of Jarama was fought between the 6th and 27th of February. Insurgent Nationalist troops attempted to capture the Madrid-Valencia road and choke supplies to the elected Republican government whose forces were defending the capital. The battle was a shambles and the outcome a stalemate. The road remained in Republican hands until the Nationalist victory in 1939.

Late autumn. The Jarama is sluggish,

waters low, banks burnt brown. Boys

racing bicycles stir columns of dust.

The river flooded during the battle,

surging so wide, so deep, that two days

of eager slaughter were postponed.

I won't polish away 80 years of tarnish.

The brass cartridge still grips its bullet

just the way you found it while walking

your dogs. A misfire. No mistaking a

firing pin's dent in a detonater cap. No

flesh torn. No bones smashed. Still, I

imagine a rifleman suddenly defenceless,

fingers fumbling to jerk an impotent

projectile from his rifle's breach.

This valley is sown with old ammo,

not all of it spent. Devotees of a dead

despot besmirch belated stones carved

and plaqued for the Republic's dead.

Small finds, such as your gift, turn the

mind to the innominate dead of a war

without a peace treaty, where loyalists

to a traitor's banner lie crossed, blessed

and hallowed beneath their names.

In a visitors' book at the small museum

in the town of Morata de Tajuña is an

entry in the hand of a militiaman from

the Lincoln brigade who returned to the

field in '86. Above his name he writes:

For Justice. For Freedom. For Democracy.

All hacked from the convulsing body

of Spain while high-minded proselytisers

of like ideals stood by and watched her die.

unfunded empathy

On Monday 29 July 2019 the prime minister of Australia declared he would not engage in 'unfunded empathy' by raising the Newstart payment which, at the time, was $277.85 per week.

an astonishing phrase from a believer

particularly an enthusiastic follower of the founder

who commanded us to love one another

even as he had loved us

it's more what you might hear from a Pharisee

or a friend of money lenders

those who made the temple a den of thieves

or perhaps it might be uttered

by an acolyte of the rich and powerful

a group as likely to pass heaven's gates

as a camel to squeeze through a needle's eye

yet even such as these might shorten their paradisiacal odds

by dispersing their treasure amongst the

ARTS AND CULTURE

Eighty years of tarnish

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