For Ashraf Fayadh

1

You do not run
through the forest of a poem
by a straight path, looking
neither left nor right.

You wander and meander,
turn off the path, find speedwell,
bryony, celandine. Look
from ten paces and two inches,
find beauty beneath beauty.

But stupid men who run all day
through the business of power
saw only a snake.

2

They love not poetry
but machines: machines that gouge
the earth for oil, build business towers,

control. Their humanoid police
were activated. On voice command
and by autonomous navigation

the poet was found. A metal voice
recited: ‘You are charged
with derogation of the Faith, which is
apostasy. You will have
no counsel’. Thus poetry

was simplified

3

The Faith
must be cared for constantly.
It is haemophiliac.
Prick it and it will die.



The Trial of William Wordsworth

Gentlemen of the jury, to conclude:

‘Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,
But to be young was very Heaven!’

He wrote this, not about the glorious
Coronation Day of our dear Queen,
but the anarchy in which the ancient crown
of the King of France was taken from him,
and he was brutally slain. You have heard

the evidence of our distinguished
Reader of Poetry, who reminds us
that poetry may not be what it seems;
that there are ‘underlying meanings’,
a concept he made very clear to us.

Elsewhere, you will recall, the prisoner
has called himself ‘an active partisan’;
in these two words conspiracy and treason
wear a thin disguise. This man has walked
the vales of Cumbria premeditating
the tearing down of all that is dear to us:
our proud nobility, the rights of property,
a man’s prerogative to protect and rule
his womenfolk. More heinous still,
he has conspired against the life
of our beloved Monarch! A final word:

there may be some among you who have doubts,
allow some minor reservation that this man
is but a harmless poet. If so, do not forget
the maxim: Better safe than sorry.

With that, Milord, I rest my case.