Leave the Queen alone!
People, leave the Queen alone.
Did she do you any harm?
Unintentional it was, I'm sure.
Are you a tax contributor?
The squad in Basra probably cost more
Last year than her entire brood did
Horses, dogs and sons included.
She's been up there all through my life
Guarding the oral constitution
Reminding me of my dear old Mum
Keeping a united Kingdom
Staring out abstractly from
The coins of daily transaction.
She's seen the PMs come and go
Shown them their place and put them there
Even budding authoritarians
Got nothing more than a distant stare
Maggie, for one, kissed her hands
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poem by Frank Bana
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Almost 21
A slim boy wearing summer clothes
Bare feet like cat's paws on the paving stones
Steps around last night's broken glass
Guitar in hand, heading for the busking site
Where the traffic never gets too loud
To play for tourist passers-by
For the drunkards on the benches
Where they pass their waking hours.
Becoming less boyish
Watching the summer's progress
Examinations done
Living in cloisters built centuries ago
For five-foot boys and men
All he had learned in recent years
Summarized in a fist of index cards.
Now he learns more by watching the town
An accelerated documentary of change
That overturns the marble statutes
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poem by Frank Bana
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Faith and Coffee, in the future
I hear a call to celebrate this moment -
after a thousand years of fear
stalking our lives and shaking the flesh
visiting our houses every Easter, after
centuries of confinement by the winters
in the forests and the pale ghetto sun -
when we may embrace each other now
before the sets of blue and silver candles
and spin our dreidels on the floor, illuminated
by the green tree that our children have adorned
set with glowing angels, gifts bow-tied
and in the ages that our prayers imagine
when everyone has flown around the world
there will be prophets still, the walls
instead hauled down. Damaged or beset,
our descendants will hold yet with high regard
our Yom Kippurs and Ramadans
and celebrate Hannukah, Eid Fitr.
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poem by Frank Bana
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Love Song for Hamas
['In Gaza, Fiery Insults to Jews Complicate Peace Efforts' - New York Times,1st April 2008]
['Here lie the killer and the killed,
asleep in one hole' - Mahmoud Darwish]
So Hamas think(s?) that as a Jew
I'm a pig
I don't think so, for pigs don't think
Ho Ho
I take more seriously
The charge that I'm an ape
It certainly bears thinking of, not least
By a Darwin-loving ape like me -
Darwinian Jewish Ape....
Darwinian Ape Jew?
You might be on to something there, Hamas
You can whip my back
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poem by Frank Bana
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Map Makers
[We were not born critical of existing society. There was a moment in our lives (or a month, or a year) when certain facts appeared before us, startled us, and then caused us to question beliefs that were strongly fixed in our consciousness-embedded there by years of family prejudices, orthodox schooling, imbibing of newspapers, radio, and television. This would seem to lead to a simple conclusion: that we all have an enormous responsibility to bring to the attention of others information they do not have, which has the potential of causing them to rethink long-held ideas.' - Howard Zinn]
There was one Italian cartographer
When this storyline began
And a hundred million children of nature
Running barefoot over grassy plains
Their innocence claiming the land
There was one John Dillinger
Robbing banks in the Mid-West
And millions of families silenced
Hostages to both guns and laws
With no protecting hand
There was one Woody Guthrie
Singing for the dispossessed
And a few who picked up his old guitar
There are Dylan, Seeger and Springsteen
And the millions without a star
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poem by Frank Bana
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New York Atonement Day
['For the sin we have committed before Thee
for not working for peace... grant us atonement'.]
I decided I could not take it any longer
Something had to be done - and by me!
People complaining I was on a downer.
Morose, they said. Horribly testy.
So I took myself by the 'scruff of the neck'
With my silver star dangling down
And I threw myself onto the ground
In front of the flags in coloured array
Along the facade of the UN HQ -
And I commenced to pray.
UN Security with their badges and blue
Came running over to see who I am
I showed them my Pass, in between Baruchs
They frowned, and decided I was best left alone,
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poem by Frank Bana
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For Who knows Loneliness
Pull back a long way, plant your feet,
Consider Loneliness from afar
Keep steady gaze until he grows familiar.
Your look eases the fear, your unease too
Falls away with Loneliness revealed
In his poor state of nakedness, a vagabond,
Transient and no more than your mind allows.
There may be no-one to appear
At the altar where you pray
At the parties where you look for friends
Nor does anything arrive to bring you joy
At moments when you most feel the need -
But the children grow and leave
For school or college overseas
And call you without warning, full of love.
Lying with your confidant in bed, was violence
A fear or just a threat? And aren't you glad
To be freed from that, suspicions and the mail
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poem by Frank Bana
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Kingsley Place (personal history, of no conceivable interest....)
Shining in the Sixties on the far side of a hill
London haze by day, stars in waiting for the dawn
Kitchen windows gazing on a garden well enclosed
Bedroom looking down upon a white carpeted lawn
My Soviet speakers shaking, rumbling in stereo
Tchaikovsky, Leonard Cohen, hadn't heard Dylan at all.
Sinatra down the hall, Benny Goodman on the patio.
My brother banged his little fists on the dividing wall.
Being asked to be a boy was tough, in some ways, I would say
Thick glasses, hair and nose in the ancient Jewish style
Writing tiny poems to the girl down by the junction
Where I lingered like an actor on a stage a mile away.
Every line composed by the haunted lights of London
I walked on down to Soho in my short pants after class
And lingered in the basements of second-hand LP stores
Imagining who I'd meet, who could sweep me to the stars.
Then off went Mum and Dad to the country, or to France
I invited my few friends around for cooking and to dance.
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poem by Frank Bana
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Herr Hitler in Reverse
Now he is lost and gone, my friends!
He sleeps with Bronte, Gandhi, Tamburlane
I wish I'd been him, known him, held him back
From falling into dark, I would have learned
Right at his feet, taken his methods, table thoughts,
Applied them town by town and street by street.
First I free the Chancelry from debt
Berlin from Wagner, unemployment,
Calculus of churches and Leibniz,
I subsidise Kurt Weill, take lunch with Brecht
Establish the Spinoza Youth, with Ernst Roem at the head!
And then each part of Africa I free
From French and British servitude, creating India too
I liberate the Russians from the hold of Bolshevy
And gift unto the Jews their holy Palestine
I break their chains before the English do
So they'll sleep good and sound - Rest will make them Free!
And all these lovely Germans under me -
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poem by Frank Bana
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England of my Heart
I'm feeling love for the England of my heart
I'm tired of those who deride you for unfixed teeth and boiled food
Poor drinking habits and guardian Queen
When you are better, beautiful in your what-the-hell
Of unprincipled tolerance and half-assed prejudice -
Too lazy to be serious and a whole lot better than the full-assed kind.
Well England, only a third of you actually voted for Thatcher
And still fewer would admit it now. Although as I recall
You did it three times. Well England,
You coined the delicious name, B.Liar, when that bloke
Proclaiming the dawn of justice hustled us down the war crimes road
And I hear you embraced Joe Strummer and chicken masala
When fish and disco became hard to find.
Home of the National Trust, home to throngs of animal lovers
Constantly irritated by the sight of children. But you'll learn,
I know you'll learn to love 'em in time. You decolonized.
You never let us down.
I'm one of your happy Jews and
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poem by Frank Bana
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