When freedom of speech hides quaking under
the prayer mat in the machine-gun thunder,
when the Mona Lisa is a khalif’s plunder
and there’s Jew-blood splashed on your trilby,
when your sister’s wrapped up like a hag in a sandstorm
but still gets raped on the train-station platform
and Rome is a pile of bricks, will you still be
kissing the hand that stabs you?
When those banners you waved among huge intellectuals,
those big-worded anti-nationalist heckles,
are looped into nooses to choke homosexuals
and you, you loyal Kim Philby,
are lying like a slice of pork luncheon meat
with your legs on the other side of the street
and the Haymarket Theatre’s a mosque, will you still be
kissing the hand that stabs you?
When your grandson (in Arabic) asks you what happened
to your balls, and if testicles were rationed
during the war, and you whine like a dachshund,
“I just didn’t want them to kill me!”
and when Darwin and Engels and Omar Khayyam
are all on the bonfire for being haram
and musicians are hurled from rooves, will you still be
sucking the cock that buggers you?
