Wreaths of Smoke
written by: Jim Murdoch
(For Ukraine)
There is a war going on now.
That’s not right though, is it?
To-dos go on and a war is more than a to-do or a palaver.
There is nothing everyday or trite about war.
“Blazing” might be a better verb:
There is a war blazing right now.
Fire is glorious and wars want to think they’re goal is glory
when really they’re just about dirt and differences.
Air is constant as is earth and water.
Fire, however, like war is ephemeral.
Both use things up and when there’s nothing left to scorch
life goes on as it always has and always will,
stocking up on fodder and tinder and thinking
telling kids never to play with matches will do
the trick.
Jim Murdoch grew up in the heart of Burns Country in Scotland. Poetry, for him, was about irrelevance—daffodils, vagabonds and babbling brooks—until one day in 1973 he read Larkin's 'Mr Bleaney' and felt as if the scales had fallen from his eyes. How could something so... so seemingly unpoetic be poetry? He aimed to find out.
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