Poetry in Motion

More than an ocean separates us from Great Britain. On this side of the Atlantic, Congress almost unanimously went along with Bush's War, and Dubya even got re-elected. Over there, word comes this morning that 23 members of Parliament have signed a House of Commons motion to kick Tony Blair out of office. As the BBC reports:

They say he misled Parliament over the case for invading Iraq and want a probe by MPs to examine his conduct in relation to the war.

There's little chance of an actual impeachment, of course, probably because there's no evidence that Blair got blow jobs from an intern at 10 Downing.

Joining in the impeachment attempt, the BBC says, is Harold Pinter, which is hardly a surprise. The playwright of The Caretaker (1960) and The Homecoming (1965) and screenwriter of The Servant (1963) and The Last Tycoon (1974), Pinter has long been a radical. Courtesy of Petri Liukkonen's excellent compilation of author bios, here's what Pinter had to say in November 2002 during an anti-war meeting at the House of Commons:

Bush has said: "We will not allow the world's worst weapons to remain in the hands of the world's worst leaders." Quite right. Look in the mirror, chum. That's you.

A couple of months ago, Pinter, now 74, was announced as the winner of the Wilfred Owen Award for anti-war poetry, specifically for WAR, his 2003 collection, which includes such ditties (courtesy of Pinter's web site) as his January 2003 God Bless America:

Here they go again,
The Yanks in their armoured parade
Chanting their ballads of joy
As they gallop across the big world
Praising America's God.

The gutters are clogged with the dead
The ones who couldn't join in
The others refusing to sing
The ones who are losing their voice
The ones who've forgotten the tune.

The riders have whips which cut.
Your head rolls onto the sand
Your head is a pool in the dirt
Your head is a stain in the dust
Your eyes have gone out and your nose
Sniffs only the pong of the dead
And all the dead air is alive
With the smell of America's God.