[Nigel Mace]

Well, John, rather anodyne than incarnadine. My 'take' on empire-building violence I intended to sum up in a poem I wrote a while back - sparked by my memory of visiting Oradour-sur-Glane, the site of a town massacre by the SS Das Reich during its withdrawal from SW France. (Its other images come from Eisenstein's "Battleship Potemkin".)


(I don't know what the 'rules' are re posting poems as comments in such a thread as this - so I'll also post it on the Metrical board, so that it can be critted in the normal way.)

My 'take' on the thug who was the starting point of this thread can be found in my last contribution to the latest Spectator thread on the Drills board - the "Rich rhymes" competition.
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[John Whitworth]

Janice, Angela Merkel is toast. She won't last the year out. Nor should she. She has behaved very foolishly. Hubris is what the ancients called it. She supposes she is German yand Germany is the EU and everyone else will jump to it. But they won't and they don't.

Do you still suppose Schengen will be back?

[Ann Drysdale]

How do people know all this with such fearless certainty? I presume it's based on what they see, but where do they stand to look?

[John Whitworth]

Ann, I am rarely certain, but I am never in doubt, as Lord Denning once said.

[Michael Cantor]

The name Lord Braystone keeps coming to mind. Ring any bells?

[John Whitworth]

You are thinking of Tarzan, Michael. I don't think Angela Merkel resembles Tarzan in any particular but perhaps you can enlighten us. My ear is open, like a hungry shark.

[Ann Drysdale]

No, John. That was Greystoke. I am Googling t'other...

... and have had no success.

But my earlier question was actually a serious one. I read these posts amazed at the amount of knowledge others have accrued on history and politics and matters of state. But since they differ so and produce such all-but-acrimonious debate, I want to find the sources of these certainties. How do you know?

[R. Nemo Hill]

The room falls silent.

Nemo

[Jayne Osborn]

(I don't know what the 'rules' are re posting poems as comments in such a thread as this - so I'll also post it on the Metrical board, so that it can be critted in the normal way.)

RE: Post #21
Sorry, Nigel, it's against the rules to post our own poems on a GT thread, but as your poem's now up on Metrical people can read it there.

(Sorry for being the bad cop, but someone's gotta )

Jayne

[Brian Allgar]

Nigel, speaking as the 'good cop', I've never really understood why comments in verse - provided they are germane to the discusssion - are streich verboten on some Eratosphere forums. After all, one could make exactly the same comment laid out as prose, and no one could complain. ("It rhymes, you say? Good heavens, so it does. Silly me!")

But then, I'm not even one of the site cops, just an itinerant PI, so all I can say is what I always tell them when they try to bring me into line: "If you kill me, how are you gonna get the bird? And if I know you can't afford to kill me, how are you gonna scare me into giving it to you?"


(For anyone who thinks I've finally gone off my head, that's a quotation from The Maltese Falcon.)