40 / Message

 This poem by Jood Gough was contributed in remembrance of a good friend from school and college days through to my early working life.  His fate was the casual collateral damage resulting from an expedient agreement at national government level oblivious to the effect on individual citizens.

A Message

Gentle Phil

teacher poet

out for a quiet drink in a Beirut bar.

Grabbed

snatched

kidnapped

bundled into a darkened car

driven up in to mountains.

Passed – sold -

from one unknown group to another

for what? for guns? for drugs?

Gentle Phil,

for three long weeks you’re a hostage to chance.

I knew nothing

and even now I dare not imagine.

And then,

Maggie says yes to Reagan.

And then, Maggie says

yes, you can re-fuel your war planes here

my friend.

Gentle Phil,

chance turns a blind eye, and you are sold once again.

This time for revenge you are dumped

head bullet-holed

on a mountain pass.

Gentle Phil,

You were there, before, when I needed you my friend.

But this time

not even my thoughts could reach to comfort you.

Gentle Phil,

poet, teacher,

abducted 28^th March 1986,

abandoned just twenty days later

wrapped in a white blood-stained cloth,

hostage to a game of power

pawn in a vicious game of chess.

Jood Gough

October 2016

Note:

The bodies of Philip Padfield, John Leigh Douglas, and Peter Kilburn – the “forgotten hostages” - were found on the 17^th April 1986 on a street near the village of Ruweisat al Sofar near Beirut, after  Margaret Thatcher allowed US planes to bomb Libya from British bases. The Revolutionary Organisation of Socialist Muslims claimed their execution as in retaliation for the US air raid on 15^th April. The three men remain unacknowledged by the British government. 

© Jood Gough