Eamonn Fitzgerald's Rainy Day

A Midsummer Night's Dream, Act 5, Scene 1. THESEUS: "The lunatic, the lover, and the poet, Are of imagination all compact."

In January, Andrew Motion, the British poet laureate, wrote a 30-word poem, Causa Belli, suggesting money, greed, oil and his father were driving George Bush to war. Now he's written another anti-war verse (170 words), a lament for Iraq, called Regime Change. An excerpt:

"Take Tigris and Euphrates; once they ran Through childhood-coloured slats of sand and sun. Not any more they don't; I've filled them up With countless different kinds of human crap."

Motion describes his opposition to the Iraq war as "very vehement" and he says Regime Change is "violently opposed to the war". But it's not unpatriotic, he argues. What do you think?

Regime Change

Advancing down the road from Niniveh
Death paused a while and said 'Now listen here.

You see the names of places roundabout?
They're mine now, and I've turned them inside out.

Take Eden, further south: At dawn today
I ordered up my troops to tear away

Its walls and gates so everyone can see
That gorgeous fruit which dangles from its tree.

You want it, don't you? Go and eat it then,
And lick your lips, and pick the same again.

Take Tigris and Euphrates; once they ran
Through childhood-coloured slats of sand and sun.

Not any more they don't; I've filled them up
With countless different kinds of human crap.

Take Babylon, the palace sprouting flowers
Which sweetened empires in their peaceful hours -

I've found a different way to scent the air:
Already it's a by-word for despair.

Which leaves Baghdad -- the star-tipped minarets,
The marble courts and halls, the mirage-heat.

These places, and the ancient things you know,
You won't know soon. I'm working on it now.'

"Men will forgive a man anything except bad prose," said Churchill. Would that he were living that at this hour.