I like this very much, James. Very thought-provoking - the tone (deceptively simple) and especially the final image, elusive and suggestive - a slippery image. Thisledown is soft and protects the thistle. It suggests to me either something like 'the villians in their ministries' aren't the the only perpetrators of the violence...or maybe something wider about volience. Violence begets violence, or something smiliar.

I get the feeling that this was provoked by a specific recent event - but one which tells a story that has happened many times, because the language of this poem is eternal and not specific.

I shall have a ponder and comment further. Thanks for posting this interesting poem.

Kirsty

I've been naughty and posted another (very short) poem below this one. It's topical because there's a Don McCullin exhibition at the Imperial War Museum North (http://north.iwm.org.uk/). It came from looking at Iraq war photographs and is a brief response to one of them - actually not one of McCullin's. The question is, how can a poem have the same impact as a photo? This little two-line thing seems at one remove at least.

Thanks for your comment, Kirsty. The shotgun that fires thistledown is meant to be the utterly ineffective weapon with which the perpetrators are 'punished'. In the poem I (or any ordinary citizen)order the arrest of the political leaders responsible for war and therefore the death of these innocent people. I act as judge, and sentence them. They are lined up against a wall and shot with the softest and most harmless thing I can think of. In other words, I am (or any ordinary citizen is) helpless make them answerable.

I think this is one of those poems that seem simple enough to the author but turn out not to be well enough expressed.

James.

<Added>

By the way, the rest of the saga of Torvald Longtooth will be finished in due course. In 12 books, like Paradise Lost. (Joking.)

Hi James

I didn't quite get the meaning of thistledown, but maybe it was just me - not that I understand what you were aiming for it makes a lot of sense. It might be very clear to other readers. I certainly think it is a very effective image.

Re:

The question is, how can a poem have the same impact as a photo?

The poem you have added has a lot of impact and is extremely visual (and visceral). There is nothing detracting from the image of the soldiers face - which makes it just like a photograph.

I suppose the advantage of a poem is that if the metaphor is right that it can stay in the mind longer than a visual image, which has greater immediate impact, but fades.