I hate it when it happens, though it is almost bound to happen a few times in your life. It happened the other day, in fact. I was telling someone that they should read some John Fowles novel or other, and I hadn’t thought about him for quite some time, and within a day or two of saying this, I learned that Fowles had just died. It’s all coincidence, of course, but it makes one a little queezy.

I had the same sensation when I learned of John Lennon’s death on December 8^th, 1980 – perhaps it only happens with people named John! I had been in the United States for a year, separated from my record collection, and after returning I had listened to all my old records again and gotten hooked on Imagine, an album I hadn’t really listened too since I had been in school. Then, pretty soon after starting to do this, I learned of Lennon’s death.

His death was a big deal for me, as it was for most of the people I knew – though many of the college students at Edinburgh (the English ones anyway), wondered what all the fuss was about and needed it explained to them – though I am not sure the explanation would have stood the test of time.

Anyway, one of my favorite songs on the Imagine album, perhaps even my favorite, was Give Me Some Truth. This always appealed to me at school, when I wasn’t sure that what we were getting was the god’s-given truth, though I didn’t quite know why.

Anyway, when George Bush was steamrolling the country towards war using fabricated evidence about connections between Hussein and al-Qaeda and stockpiles of WMD to do so, the song came back to me once again. And when we had our Poetry Against the War event at Stockton I decided that I should read out the song as a poem. A lot of the poems read at the event were about the horrors of war, but it seemed to me that (while it seemed incongruous at the time) this was the poem that would come to sum up the situation most clearly. After all, there have been few wars that haven’t been sold by a lie or two from the governments involved – “benign” or otherwise.

Here are the words of the poem:

I'm sick and tired of hearing things

From uptight, short-sighted, narrow-minded hypocritics

All I want is the truth

Just gimme some truth

I've had enough of reading things

By neurotic, psychotic, pig-headed politicians

All I want is the truth

Just gimme some truth

No short-haired, yellow-bellied, son of tricky dicky

Is gonna mother hubbard soft soap me

With just a pocketful of hope

Money for dope

Money for rope

No short-haired, yellow-bellied, son of tricky dicky

Is gonna mother hubbard soft soap me

With just a pocketful of soap

Money for dope

Money for rope

I'm sick to death of seeing things

From tight-lipped, condescending, mama's little chauvinists

All I want is the truth

Just gimme some truth now

I've had enough of watching scenes

Of schizophrenic, ego-centric, paranoiac, prima-donnas

All I want is the truth now

Just gimme some truth

No short-haired, yellow-bellied, son of tricky dicky

Is gonna mother hubbard soft soap me

With just a pocketful of soap

It's money for dope

Money for rope

Ah, I'm sick to death of hearing things

from uptight, short-sighted, narrow-minded hypocrites

All I want is the truth now

Just gimme some truth now

I've had enough of reading things

by neurotic, psychotic, pig-headed politicians

All I want is the truth now

Just gimme some truth now

All I want is the truth now

Just gimme some truth now

All I want is the truth

Just gimme some truth

All I want is the truth

Just gimme some truth