{"id":410,"date":"2007-04-29T01:27:00","date_gmt":"2007-04-29T07:27:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/?p=410"},"modified":"2008-05-19T23:52:21","modified_gmt":"2008-05-19T22:52:21","slug":"dead-journalists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/2007\/04\/dead-journalists\/","title":{"rendered":"Dead journalists"},"content":{"rendered":"

I<\/span> hadn’t come across this poem before from former foreign corrrespondent James Fenton<\/a>. [HT: 3quarksdaily<\/a>] It’s a tribute to dead journalists, but it doesn’t work for me. It reads like a cheap Auden<\/a> pastiche. Perhaps there’s an appropriate irony there? I prefer Harry Evans’<\/span> valediction<\/a> for David Blundy<\/span>. Still, you might have a different view. <\/p>\n

Memorial<\/p>\n

We spoke, we chose to speak of war and strife —
A task a fine ambition sought —
And some might say, who shared our work, our life:
That praise was dearly bought.<\/p>\n

Drivers, interpreters, these were our friends.
These we loved. These we were trusted by.
The shocked hand wipes the blood across the lens.
The lens looked to the sky.<\/p>\n

Most died by mischance. Some seemed honour-bound
To take the lonely, peerless track
Conceiving danger as a testing-ground
To which they must go back<\/p>\n

Till the dry tongue fell silent and they crossed
Beyond the realm of time and fear.
Death waved them through the checkpoint. They were lost.
All have their story here.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I hadn’t come across this poem before from former foreign corrrespondent James Fenton. [HT: 3quarksdaily] It’s a tribute to dead journalists, but it doesn’t work for me. It reads like a cheap Auden pastiche. Perhaps there’s an appropriate irony there? I prefer Harry Evans’ valediction for David Blundy. Still, you might have a different view. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7,50],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-410","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-journalism","category-journalists"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/410","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=410"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/410\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=410"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=410"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=410"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}