Standing firm

Well - it was inevitable, I suppose.

It didn't stop tears weltering in my eyes. I'd been so hopeful, you see, that it was all over - but no. No, the horror and catastrophe of yesterday will be hard to erase from my memory.

The only consolation I hold onto, and can give you, is that England might well pull out the stops in the second innings.

I mean, 92 for 7! Aweful - still, at least they're less than 100 runs behind Australia.

As for other events, I think more poetry is in order.

Shelley, again, the Mask of Anarchy...

'Let a vast assembly be,
And with great solemnity
Declare with measured words that ye
Are, as God has made ye, free -

'Be your strong and simple words
Keen to wound as sharpened swords,
And wide as targes let them be,
With their shade to cover ye.

[...]

'Let the fixèd bayonet
Gleam with sharp desire to wet
Its bright point in English blood
Looking keen as one for food.

'Let the horsemen's scimitars
Wheel and flash, like sphereless stars
Thirsting to eclipse their burning
In a sea of death and mourning.

'Stand ye calm and resolute,
Like a forest close and mute,
With folded arms and looks which are
Weapons of unvanquished war

And just to be transatlantic about it (America, is, after all, the country of The Revolution).

Those corpses of young men,
Those martyrs that hang from the gibbets, those hearts pierc'd by
the gray lead,
Cold and motionless as they seem live elsewhere with unslaughter'd vitality.

They live in other young men O kings!
They live in brothers again ready to defy you,
They were purified by death, they were taught and exalted.

Not a grave of the murder'd for freedom but grows seed for freedom,
in its turn to bear seed,
Which the winds carry afar and re-sow, and the rains and the snows nourish.

Not a disembodied spirit can the weapons of tyrants let loose,
But it stalks invisibly over the earth, whispering, counseling, cautioning.
Liberty, let others despair of you--I never despair of you.

Walt Whitman, Europe.

For the record, then, lets say it loud and clear, so that terrorists and politicians (with potentially stupid ideas): terrorists are prepared to die for their cause, well, so are we. I would rather take teh risk of dying in terrorist atrocity than see people banged up without trial, with suspension of freedom of speech, with endless security and surveillance. If you think we're gonna let either of you get away with it, you've got anotehr think coming.

Anyway, perhaps the next issue of Viz will feature a special strip where the Pathetic Sharks meet the Pathetic Terrorists