A Cold Coming "A cold coming we had of it."

T. S. Eliot

Journey of the Magi I saw the charred Iraqi lean

towards me from bomb-blasted screen, his windscreen wiper like a pen

ready to write down thoughts for men, his windscreen wiper like a quill

he's reaching for to make his will. I saw the charred Iraqi lean

like someone made of Plasticine as though he'd stopped to ask the way

and this is what I heard him say: 'Don't be afraid I've picked on you

for this exclusive interview. Isn't it your sort of poet's task

to find words for this frightening mask? If that gadget that you've got records

words from such scorched vocal chords, press RECORD before some dog

devours me mid-monologue.' So I held the shaking microphone

closer to the crumbling bone: 'I read the news of three wise men

who left their sperm in nitrogen, three foes of ours, three wise Marines

with sample flasks and magazines, three wise soldiers from Seattle

who banked their sperm before the battle. Did No. 1 say: God be thanked

I've got my precious semen banked. And No. 2: O praise the Lord

my last best shot is safely stored. And No. 3: Praise be to God

I left my wife my frozen wad? So if their fate was to be gassed

at least they thought their name would last, and though cold corpses in Kuwait

they could by proxy procreate. Excuse a skull half roast, half bone

for using such a scornful tone. It may seem out of all proportion

but I wish I'd taken their precaution. They seemed the masters of their fate

with wisely jarred ejaculate Was it a propaganda coup

to make us think they'd cracked death too. disinformation to defeat us

with no post-mortem millilitres? Symbolic billions in reserve

made me, for one, lose heart and nerve. On Saddam's pay we can't afford

to go and get our semen stored. Sad to say that such high tech's

uncommon here. We're stuck with sex. If you can conjure up and stretch

your imagination (and not retch) the image of me beside my wife

closely clasped creating life... (I let the unfleshed skull unfold

a story I'd been already told, and idly tried to calculate

the content of ejaculate: the sperm in one ejaculation

equals the whole Iraqi nation times, roughly, let's say, 12.5

though that .5's not now alive. Let's say the sperms were an amount

so many times the body count, 2,500 times at least

(but let's wait till the toll's released!). Whichever way Death seems outflanked

by one tube of cold bloblings banked. Poor bloblings, maybe you've been blessed

with, of all fates possible, the best according to Sophocles i.e.

'the best of fates is not to be' a philosophy that's maybe bleak

for any but an ancient Greek but difficult these days to escape

when spoken to by such a shape. When you see men brought to such states

who wouldn't want that 'best of fates' or in the world of Cruise and Scud

not go kryonic if he could, spared the normal human doom

of having made it through the womb?) He heard my thoughts and stopped the spool:

'I never thought life futile, fool! Though all Hell began to drop

I never wanted life to stop. I was filled with such a yearning

to stay in life as I was burning, such a longing to be beside

my wife in bed before I died, and, most, to have engendered there

a child untouched by war's despair. So press RECORD! I want to reach

the warring nations with my speech. Don't look away! I know it's hard

to keep regarding one so charred, so disfigured by unfriendly fire

and think it once burned with desire. Though fire has flayed off half my features

they once were like my fellow creatures', till some screen-gazing crop-haired boy

from Iowa or Illinois, equipped by ingenious technophile

put paid to my paternal smile and made the face you see today

an armature half-patched with clay, an icon framed, a looking glass

for devotees of "kickinng ass", a mirror that returns the gaze

of victors on their victory days and in the end stares out the watcher

who ducks behind his headline: GOTCHA! or behind the flag-bedecked page 1

of the true to bold-type-setting SUN! I doubt victorious Greeks let Hector

join their feast as spoiling spectre, and who'd want to sour the children's joy

in Iowa or IIinois or ageing mothers overjoyed

to find their babies weren't destroyed? But cabs beflagged with SUN front pages

don't help peace in future ages. Stars and Stripes in sticky paws

may sow the seeds for future wars. Each Union Jack the kids now wave

may lead them later to the grave. But praise the Lord and raise the banner

(excuse a skull's sarcastic manner!) Desert Rat and Desert Stormer

without scars and (maybe) trauma, the semen-bankers are all back

to sire their children in their sack. With seed sown straight from the sower

dump second-hand spermatozoa! Lie that you saw me and I smiled

to see the soldier hug his child. Lie and pretend that I excuse

my bombing by B52s, pretend I pardon and forgive

that they still do and I don't live, pretend they have the burnt man's blessing

and then, maybe, I'm spared confessing that only fire burnt out the shame

of things I'd done in Saddam's name, the deaths, the torture and the plunder

the black clouds all of us are under. Say that I'm smiling and excuse

the Scuds we launched against the Jews. Pretend I've got the imagination

to see the world beyond one nation. That's your job, poet, to pretend

I want my foe to be my friend. It's easier to find such words

for this dumb mask like baked dogturds. So lie and say the charred man smiled

to see the soldier hug his child. This gaping rictus once made glad

a few old hearts back in Baghdad, hearts growing older by the minute

as each truck comes without me in it. I've met you though, and had my say

which you've got taped. Now go away.' I gazed at him and he gazed back

staring right through me to Iraq. Facing the way the charred man faced

I saw the frozen phial of waste, a test-tube frozen in the dark,

crib and Kaaba, sacred Ark, a pilgrimage of Cross and Crescent

the chilled suspension of the Present. Rainbows seven shades of black

curved from Kuwait back to Iraq, and instead of gold the frozen crock's

crammed with Mankind on the rocks, the congealed geni who won't thaw

until the World renounces War, cold spunk meticulously jarred

never to be charrer or the charred, a bottled Bethlehem of this come-

curdling Cruise/Scud-cursed millenium. I went. I pressed REWIND and PLAY

and I heard the charred man say: