Lanius

The Destruction of Basra War Cemetery by the British Army The stones stood silent in the desert sun, Bearing the names of men who would not come Home from the wars that ended long ago -- Names carved in rock, standing rank and file, Who fell at Basra’s bloody, forgotten battles. In two thousand and three the soldiers came, Not foes, but kinsmen in the same khaki cloth, Or near as dammit, And lifted carefully the heavy slabs, The memorial panels with their badges carved, And stacked them high on pallets in the dust. 'For safekeeping,' they were told, and bore them off To Saddam’s empty palace, then to Shaiba Base, Where no one knew what next should be their fate. The living turned to more urgent tasks;-- The dead waited in patient, ordered piles. Eighteen months later, when the need arose To fill a ditch that drained the camp away, They crushed the stones to gravel, rough and grey, And dumped the shattered names into the earth -- Those hundreds who had once been honoured there. No bugle sounded, no last post played. Only the grind of machines against the past, And silence afterwards, as deep as graves That now lie empty of their proper mark. The desert wind still moves across the site, But finds no letters left to whisper through. Three thousand sleepers wait for dignity That those who wore the same proud uniform Have ground to dust beneath a soldier’s heel, And used to keep the living’s boots bone-dry, As per emails from on high.

Butterbur can confuse your nose when you strim it down. Equal parts sharp, stinky medicine smell and washing machine detergent. Culpepper says: 'It is a great strengthener of the heart and cheerer of the vital spirits: . . . if the powder thereof be taken in wine, it also resisteth the force of any other poison . . . the decoction of the root in wine is singularly good for those that wheeze much or are shortwinded.... The powder of the root taketh away all spots and blemishes of the skin.'