Last Train to Mirabad
Julian Assange took on the US
Wikileak’d ten years war in Afghanistan
Protesters in Tahrir Square had no time
The leaks did not rhyme
Put out Mubarak for freedom sake
To have their say
Across Africa and Arabia
Other side of the world
Julian roams downstairs in Woolwich Court
Thinking what would Pilger and Ellsberg do now?
Waiting to be taken through tunnel to Belmarsh Prison
Where ghosts of IRA meet Ronnie Biggs in special secure unit
No Wikileaks today about Sapper Jamie Larcombe
No mention of his Afghan mate
They lost their lives at Mirabad last night
Jamie died, despite first aid, unable to be saved
Gunshot wounds killed Sapper Larcombe
Air Vice Marshall Houston sighed
Only 21 years old and his interpreter
Buried according to local custom
Jamie Larcombe was just nineteen
When he signed up for the Operation
They called ‘Slipper’
Code for global war
In Afghanistan, Middle East and the Gulf of Aden
No medals will bring Jamie home,
That boy from Kangaroo Island
Lets bring to an end
The terror and the killing
Those masters plan wars in tall towers
But do they think of the children and the flowers?
They conscript women to kill
But care not a damn
Young people’s blood
Flows out of their bodies
Now buried in the sand
Back in Afghanistan
US fuelled ideas on Economy and State
Some succeed, others must fail
Australia, a one party state
With Labor and Liberal both the same
To poor people whose only hope is revolt
So sad for Sapper Larcombe and his Afghan mate
In Mirabad lay their fate
Three journos approaching, Julian, John and Dan
Winds of knowledge howl
US Generals standing on the watchtower
Cry our country always does the right thing
Meanwhile Grand Jury in Virginia has sent
Poor Bradley Manning on the last train to Mirabad
Americans do the right thing
Only after exhausting every other option first
From Arab Spring
we come singing
for freedom’s sake
strike up the banner,
cry war no more
rid us of this insane curse
those warmongers are the worse
our job is not to lead
nor is it to be led
lower the casket down
on our graves rich masters
feed their fortune
let’s bring war to an end,
it cannot come too soon
in this, our pale afternoon
– Ode to lives lost at Mirabad
Ian Curr
2011
