David Cameron, British PM, has been over there in the US of A this week, bigging down his role as a junior partner. Not a history boy, Cameron yesterday talked about, on TV no less, how Britain was even junior partner in fighting the Nazis in 1940. Well, maybe to the Russians, but not the Yanks. As every schoolchild knows, or once did, the Americans only entered in 1941, after Pearl Harbour. Instead, the 1940 war period was Britain's "finest hour". I wonder, will Cameron also acknowledge that WH Auden is really American, and thank the States for loaning "us" Eliot? Indeed, is British poetry, postwar, junior partner to the American stream?
A poem for my mother, July 15 When she was dying And I was in a different country I dreamt I was there with her Flying over the ocean very quickly, And arriving in the room like a dream And I was a dream, but the meaning was more Than a dream has – it was a moving over time And land, over water, to get love across Fast enough, to be there, before she died, To lean over the small, huddled figure, In the dark, and without bothering her Even with apologies, and be a kiss in the air, A dream of a kiss, or even less, the thought of one, And when I woke, none of this had happened, She was still far distant, and we had not spoken.
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