Poems By Simon Beechinor

Listen to: Banzai You Bastards! That night we heard the echoes of his homeland, the melancholic gospels of the valleys, that brought fair peace to his impassioned mind, and purpose born in hellish purgatory. Without that choral splendour then and now, He felt his anger rise to rage and burn, at the trauma and injustice suffered, by those unfree yet undefeated men. Those righteous hymns and blessed songs lent strength to his endurance in his slavery; from the music of his childhood sprang hope in Nippon's fetid mines at Kinkaseki. Hope gave him the grace to bear the cruel scars, shattered mind and unseen wounds poorly healed, the damage of disease and foul neglect. ‘Keep Going The Spirit that Kept Us Going’. Now, when he wrote with such righteous fury across the page his treasured words to me, I understood the fearful toll imposed on him; the brutal cost of his memory. His words to me are written clear: ‘None of us should forget! Jack Edwards, Prisoner 159.’

This poem is dedicated to the people of Ukraine.  Listen to: Nadya Goes to War Argyll Street glitters in the warm, soft rain, where Nadya's hawking her papers to the crowd, selling the news of people and places, from her pitch by the Palladium’s doors. She grins and waves away my offered coins; she's sad—we won't meet again, she sighs. They need her at home, though her home's destroyed; a tear belies the sadness in her eyes. Nadya brims with life, with hope and plans; perhaps her future's bleak, but who can tell? In sorrow I grasp her soft, extended hand, with all my heart, I wish her safe and well.      That smiling girl insists she must return,      Nadya the anaesthetist is going to war.  

This poem is dedicated to the memory of Private Patrick O’Callaghan (40296) of the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers. He now lies, almost forgotten, in an unmarked grave near Middlesbrough. Patrick was brought home from France in November 1917, alive but a broken man. We visited his grave in 2024, he has no memorial but this poem. Listen to: At Eston Cemetery Stand easy, brother; my war is over. Our kin know of my soldier's forfeit, They’ve stood their solemn vigil by my side, Now, we may sleep beneath the vaulted skies. No Portland stone bears witness to my fate Amid the torn and tortured fields of France; A shattered soul, they brought me home to rest, For our futile war had crushed my mind. My bitter war was fought alone, unseen By others until I screamed in haunted fear, And would suffer the thoughtless jests of fools, As shell-shocked nerves conjured with my limbs. In time, this earth became my peaceful bed, And the freshly mown grass became my shroud, Oft draped in dew and red and

This poem is a portrait of an Australian stevedore I once met as we both watched cargo being loaded onboard my ship for Papua New Guinea. New Guinea was a vicious and bloody theatre of the Second World War where ANZACs and Americans fought, often hand-to-hand, against their ferocious Japanese enemy.  Listen to: Portrait of an ANZAC The foreman stood beside the slewing crane; As he watched our cargo stowed below, Within the vessel's deep and gaping maw. His weathered face was deeply lined and tanned,  With once-bright grey eyes, now ageing and dimmed. 'You're loading for New Guinea, Mister Mate? We went up there in forty-two and three, To bloody Kokoda, Milne Bay and Lae.'  He raised his calloused hands for me to see  The cruel scars that bound his sinewed arms.  'I still succumb to vivid, hellish dreams; Sweat-soaked in fear and swallowed by the bush, I hack and hack and hack the kunai grass, That swishes, slashes and slices my skin, Then wade neck-deep through bloo

Listen to: The English Refugee For a careless moment, suspend your disbelief; Put aside the grim cares of Gaza, Ukraine, Syria and Iran. Perhaps imagine changing the colour of your skin! Have courage; bend your mind to the feeble politics of man. However hard it is, imagine yourself upon a human tide, Of refugees who may yet be distant in their plight. Be not arrogant and say, ‘It wouldn’t happen here’, Suspend your disbelief and, for now, assume it might. Imagine poor Britain amid monstrous tumult and aflame, And a cold-hearted Wales has, at last, built its Trumpish wall. You learn from the BBC you’re among an English ‘swarm’, Oh, how the corrupted politicians wring their hands appalled. When you fled your home to land upon our golden shore, How hard you fell among the dreary lexicon of refugees. Criminals! Boat people! Immigrants! Send them back! Fly them to Rwanda, where none may hear your pleas! What innocence brought you to your dreadful impasse? Did you fail to love the Party, or

This poem is dedicated to the memory of Private Thomas O’Callaghan of the Royal Irish Rifles, who was killed in action on 9th September 1916 on the Somme at Ginchy, and of his twin brother Private Patrick O’Callaghan who served with the Royal Iniskilling Fusiliers until November 1917.  Thomas has no grave and is recorded among the missing at Thiepval. Patrick was invalided out of the army, suffering a 50% disability caused by ‘neurasthenia and dementia’ directly attributable to his war service. In the 1920s, his disability allowance was increased to 100%, and he died unmarried in 1947. Listen to: At Thiepval My name’s here, O’Callaghan, T., carved deep In timeless Portland stone, ‘lest you forget’. For years, I've looked across those bloodied fields,  And wished you’d come and stand with me. The guns are silent now; only mourners trudge Past the serried lines of missing men. Stand by my side and let the autumn breeze Be my voice in our storied sepulchral hall. Near Ginchy on the ni

Listen To: Portrait of a Cleaner The old cleaner bent to his mop, And swabbed the washroom floor. ‘You surely must have been there, Alf, What d’you do in the war?’ He was small, silver-haired and stooped, Invisible to most. He rarely spoke; a quiet man, In his simple work engrossed. He looked long at the mirrored wall, And a younger man replied. ‘Oh, I had a busy war, boy,’ And he spoke on with pride. ‘I was a miner here, in Pontypridd,’ His lilting voice compelled me, To pause, to stand and listen well, And so he told his story. ‘Over two hundred of us left, We volunteered to fight, ’Gainst Franco and the fascists, To help freedom in her plight.’ He was no lettered Thomas, But made my time stand still, His were the annals of working men, And how his tale did thrill. ‘We came home, beat, in ‘39, I couldn’t face the pit, So answered our country’s call, And, aye, I did my bit. France was a bloody mess like Spain, It was a dreadful slaughter, At Dunkirk, we waited for days, Waist deep, I