Today in The Guardian, playwright Harold Pinter published a poem about America's intended military confrontation with Iraq. Instapundit says he agrees with blogger Chris Bertram that it is "scraping the bottom of the barrel."

Here's the poem:
Wednesday January 22, 2003
The Guardian

Here they go again,
The Yanks in their armoured parade
Chanting their ballads of joy
As they gallop across the big world
Praising America's God.
The gutters are clogged with the dead
The ones who couldn't join in
The others refusing to sing
The ones who are losing their voice
The ones who've forgotten the tune.

The riders have whips which cut.
Your head rolls onto the sand
Your head is a pool in the dirt
Your head is a stain in the dust
Your eyes have gone out and your nose
Sniffs only the pong of the dead
And all the dead air is alive
With the smell of America's God.

© Harold Pinter, January 2003

We'll admit, we didn't care much for the imagery in the poem. But we knew if anyone would defend the poem it would be TalkLeft's sister, who is the Bibliographical Editor of The Pinter Review and has published a book and otherwise written extensively about him. So we asked her what she thought. She sent us to a message board on Pinter where she had posted her detailed response earlier this morning. Her post is in response to a poster who had written (in response to yet another poster,)

"Please feel free to hit that highway, both you and the idiot Pinter (what the hell is "sniff only the pong of the dead"). Those of us who are left will do what has to be done. I won't bother to argue with either of you, might as well argue with bricks.

Here is her reply:

The word "pong" (British usage) means odor. The word appears in The Dumb Waiter (regarding the possibly unchanged bed sheets/linens) and relates to The Caretaker, where Aston complains about Davies' "stinking" the place out. I think it also is used in The Dwarfs (novel and play).

I just saw the poem "God Bless America" today too. I think it is another one of Harold Pinter's powerful indictments of the hypocrisy of the current (and past) American "Administration."

It continues his critique of American political and military policies and practices exposed in his poems "Partners," "American Football," "Death," "A