Hal G.P. Colebatch: Two Poems

The tourist learns a lesson

One evening in London, at a Thames-side pub

(the sky and calm river were pearl and I

had been mulling over a poem

about history and a little launch I had seen

flying the Dunkirk Jack),

I remarked over my beer

to a local, born I would say in the ’60s,

on the rebuilding of the South bank

since the Second World War.

He had, he told me, heard of this Second World War,

but what puzzled him was the question:

Had there been, therefore, a First World War?

Hal G.P. Colebatch

 

Fanny Radmall, Lady Houston

She was spawned in a London backstreet,

Ninth of ten shoeless brats.

Her father was a warehouse man. She,

Destined to run with the human alley-cats.

 

Quite unimportant. No one saw

Any gathering of fates about her birth,

Her life mattered to none, and least of all

To the tyrant who would almost eat the Earth.

 

Hitler at least saw clearly. The democracies

Dare oppose him? Let them try!

He set his mighty power to move and build

An Air Force that would dominate the sky.

 

The world-map a picture in his mind:

Jews and Slavs to be taken out

Of that picture altogether. Aryan ramparts

Of population. The narrow seas about

 

England would be no barrier this time:

The new air-power would alter all

Seize Europe’s heartland first, and then

The old sea-wolf must fall.

 

Fear and pacifist propaganda

Loosened the sinews. What to do

Against that dire and echoing death-knell:

“The bomber will always get through!”?

 

While the great ones conferred about the world,

While Hitler saw the ripening of his plan,

Fanny, ageing, remained that figure of fun,

A chorus-girl who married a rich man.

 

I do not know the details now:

I imagine she asked Mitchell, with a laugh

To flatter a vain old woman,

And accept her autograph.

 

And Mitchell, his mind distracted

By scenes of Europe’s coming wreck

Took it from politeness, absently,

Then realised it was a cheque.

 

Heinkel and Junkers darkened the map,

Like a slowly spreading stain.

Now Mitchell fought with the calendar

As he fought with cancer’s pain.

 

Blazing Warsaw and Rotterdam

Showed all the theories right.

The gouts of Hellfire left no doubt,

In their towering, awful light.

 

Of the fool’s hopes of resistance—

Dreams of deluded men,

notions for patriotic Blimps,

or ageing widows then.

 

The black words of ultimatum filled the sky:

“Die under the bombs, or yield”

But the cheque was spent. The Merlin engine roared,

And the Spitfire soared above the field

Hal G.P. Colebatch