One

This was the war

that tried to turn the clock back forty years,

though it seemed a hundred-and-forty;

that gave a failing politician eight more years

to divide her country.

This was the war that launched a thousand atlases;

that tabloids were made for;

that Exocets and bunting flew for.

This was the war

that made me feel ashamed.

Two

Twenty years on

there are two failing politicians.

The one seeking to exorcise a ghost bequeathed by his father,

the other to lay some more complex wraith

tempered in the Rock of Gibraltar,

though the stones of Las Malvinas mark its spawning.

The poor man's Hamlet may

this time spare his Ophelia, Laertes and Polonius.

This pale Ham might let,

unscarred, his brothers Shem and Japheth live.

Even as, by the Waters of Babylon,

righteously, we lay our weapons of mass destruction down.