• A Poem by A.M.Ripellino.

• A Poem by Lewis Carroll (oysters in Oxbridge)

• January 2009
  
  The bad news is our Great Britain, the mean,
  grinds to a halt for a few centimeters of snow.
  The good news is our strong committed workers
  don't mind walking on woollen carpets of cold.
  
  The working class is back! Miners of old,
  energy workers striking shame the bankers,
  jam in their hands; the Lady stings no more,
  one job one pay trough through Europe, Mr Bean!
  
  Around the man of snow the children squeal
  running ecstatic; splattering cars get stuck
  and stop, awaiting an old helping truck.
  The spinning flakes grow thicker; London is clean.
  

• Alan 2009
  
  Sad scholars study management, become bosses
  give perks to mechanize creative labour;
  the fuss, called "impact factor", of any ideal
  is measured by accountants with no insight.
  
  Staring at the window, thoughts float in the night,
  seeking a solid path anxiety won't reveal,
  you burn ridiculed papers, the old endeavour
  of a redundant teacher, to smoke, ponder your losses.
  
  Brother, will you push the deadly button
  wounding the planet with scares painful to heal
  without knowing the order came from a man?
  
  They want a mechanic self, as seen by Alan,
  to trust their computer's message over reason's appeal,
  to not care if the sender was an automaton.
  
  

• Clemenceau
  The grey decaying carrier enters the port:
  a tiger's name by deadly asbestos is met.
  Repealed by all harbours, all seas reject her hull,
  as earth couldn't hold dead youth in Somme's plane.
  
  Hail you, workers of Britain, you who the monster tame,
  washing the corpse and melting bones and skull!
  For the past Queen's honour, the risks to yourself you accept
  may not profit the scavengers and your own lives abort.
  
  Isn't this what we wanted, what Europe was made for,
  melting statues of warmongers, making bread for us all,
  joining most brilliant minds to a cooperative call,
  being aware of the risks of the idols we are used to adore?
  
  Note: The decommissioned French "Clemenceau" aircraft carrier arrived on February 7th 2009 in Hartlepool harbour, Teesside, to be dismantled.
  The French politician Georges Clemenceau (1841-1929), once an opinionated Radical leftist republican, being convinced of the inevitability of 1st WW, became a right-wing prime minister in the last period of the war, repealed with iron fist all pacifist attempt to end it and fought for the strictest conditions to be imposed on Germany in 1919 Versailles Treaty; he was called "the tiger".

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