Fiddlers Three

 I've always felt a closeness to the poet Sidney Keyes who died in the Second World War and he appears to have felt a similar closeness to the 19th century "peasant" poet John Clare. That's the background....


Fiddlers Three

For Sidney Keyes

The tune is passed 
From fiddle to fiddle-
From Clare to me
With you in the middle.

Clare in Northamptonshire
Stood in a field,
You in Tunisia,
Me in the Weald.

And the name of the tune
Is Night bird's Call
And the name of the tune 
Is Stars That Fall
And the name of the tune
Is Hole In The Wall.

Rifleman

 A poem arrives- and sometimes another travels in the slipstream. This is the one that hitched a lift. We'll call it Rifleman

Rifleman

I had a swastika
On my sleeve-
Not a good look
I now believe

Also a gun
And boots to stamp
And a tower looking over
A prison camp.

The air was cold,
The food was bad,
I missed my mum
If not my dad-
At least it wasn't
Stalingrad.

But Russians came
With furry hats.
Our prisoners hunted us
Like rats-

Three of whom
Murdered me
While I looked down
From the top of a tree.