The Poetry of Richard McKane, Part 2

To update an earlier post, Richard McKane sent a cycle of poems relating to human rights abuses in Uzbekistan:

LAMENT FOR UZBEKISTAN

So, Presidents Bush and Karimov,

you believe the base line on Uzbekistan

is the US Military Base

and how it opens up Afghanistan:

but below that base line is underground resistance

in your countries, is the power of dissidence.

Why, Bush, did you relax your insistence

on human rights being observed

in Uzbekistan – was your swerve

to get in line with the dictator,

to curry his favour?

Then this is more base than your military base.

Mister Presidents, I address you in one breath,

but also I seem to be talking almost exclusively

to my friend Ruslan Sharipov and the Uzbek people,

who despite the global village feel deserted to oppression,

prison and death,

you George Bush, who is not a stranger to the thrust of

the church steeple,

and you, Islam Karimov, whose belief may be more in Stalinism

than the Islam of your name,

search your consciences: ‘The Great Game’ is not a game,

the bombers and fighters in the air,

the bombers and fighters on the ground –

and this is not written just for its poetic sound –

here we have the crux of the twenty first century.

You both have more power than an exposed UN sentry:

but I regret I see a fundamental intolerance

in both your attitudes. If, Bush, you believe

the casualties of 9/11 are watching you from heaven,

if Karimov, you could wise up and leave

the reins of power and allow an opposition and freedom of expression,

you could both broker a fundamentally peaceful sort of ‘retribution’;

but these are a poet’s words, not swords

and written with an element of despair

for I fear that for you two powerful men,

the sword is mightier than the pen

and that for Uzbekistan and the world is base and unfair.

13 May 2005