Read Online Flame and Slag by Ron Berry - Free Book Online Page A

to Dai Stevens.”
    “Only you can learn to live with that, my love.”
    “I know.”
    Her sphinx smile glimmered. “It’s always I know . Of course you do — often. Often. I fell for you straight away, didn’t I? I mean it was one of the reasons, but, Rees, what I think is this: you don’t care about ordinary things. Ordinary things annoy you. Yes, yes, let me finish!” She re-tied the sash cord around her bulging dressing-gown. Lovely, I thought, lovely Ellen.
    “Remember this, boy?” she said, waving the foolscap sheets.
    “Last year, the NCB competition, World Without War.”
    “Aye, World Without War,” I said. “Their title.”
    “We should have sent it in, Rees.”
    “Doesn’t matter, Ellen. Shove it back between your lovely …”
    “Hush!” Her voice thickened:

    “ ‘ World Without War.
    But first the premise: Could we inhabit it?
    Braided hordes of eagled, star-pipped marchers
    Seldom diagnosed as mad, our solid muscled
    Swaddies desperately bored, the defiant erk,
    Taut, as much concerned about his father’s
    DSO as girls, our honest, devious matlows
    Shaped to blind obedience. We, then, ourselves
    Inherit (query) peace, this earth’s untruth,
    Where fisted tables snowball further
    Ultimatums?
    Many of us are television natives.
    Or shall any racket, private row between any two
    Be resolved in murder? Our cliques, claques,
    Caballers, families their ample precedent.

    Perhaps first a pre-premise, necessary discretion
    In allegiance to Mr C. Darwin, perhaps,
    Should be mooted, measured, weighed in wanting
    Before that sequel Mount of Olives declaration
    Echoes another gnat’s-span moil of joy and chagrin.
    The hypothesis might exclude sweet retribution.
    We aren’t blessed with mere multitudes below
    — There are none below — but entire homo sapiens,
    Nary one expendable to the next. Just one alone
    Being the plague and glory of art, of everyman’s
    Inadequate faith, promise, his life’s work moving
    Via catastrophic norms yet ever aimed at clarity.
    History plus, or divided by Mr Freud’s exegesis
    Will not let us (anyone at all now) claim peace
    Requires martyrdom. Nor war neither, brother.
    Nor heaven and hell — four judgement nouns,
    Durable integers of survival’s pristine order,
    God-damned absolutes aptly tailored, fitting
    Hindsight, reasonable griff, fate, genius itself
    e.g. good old William Blake’s soul prising,
    Who saw us whole in terms of Was, Is and
    Will-be, with sweetly pro-angelic floaters
    Run off the sentient, self-same mould. Old W.B.,
    He tenanted the howling wilderness of
    Failure, too.

    So again the given premise: World Without War,
    For we who are bored by trick saints (sure, sure)
    And daily sickened, festered by righteous edicts
    From warring experts, from big specialists
    Affined to Al Capone more so than Kristos maimed,
    We who are (warranted like them, of course, proven)
    Deprived, no, losers, no, encompassed by conflict,
    By hope betrothed to love and hate, circlers,
    Roundabout riders driven by nobody’s silence,
    Belly-aching at the still, small voices saying, This?
    This isn’t, not yet. Peaky, sensible voices saying,
    Your peace my war is the world. Saying, Conscience?
    Safe in your conscience, sibling, I fold, unfold
    My arms. ’”
    I said, “Beaut, you make it sound stronger than it is.”
    Belly-proud, she lofted the bread knife like a priestess. “Only yesterday I read that strange piece you wrote when I was carrying Lydia. Dammo, you’re not human sometimes. It isn’t even a love poem!”
    “I tried though, beaut.”
    “It’s as if you were watching yourself having a baby!”
    “I wasn’t, though, beaut. Be fair.”
    “Rees, I love you differently from the way you love me. That’s wonderful, don’t you realize?”
    “Fate, Ellen.”
    “Wonderful, supreme in a way — isn’t it?”
    “We pick the daftest times. Inside ten minutes I’ve got to climb the tump, change my clothes, collect my lamp and get down the pit. So