John Baker’s Blog

I’m expecting a raid. When the police come to my house, they’ll find a shelf full of books glorifying terrorism. In The Minimanual of the Urban Guerrilla, by Carlos Marighella, they’ll find detailed instructions on waging war against the state. Among the Red Army Faction communiques they’ll find statements like this: “Either a pig or [...]

STILLE NACHT
On the night
that I was born,
the bells rang out
across the world.
In Coventry, in Dresden,
the cathedral bones sheltered
worshippers with candles,
witnessing the ruins.
In Auschwitz-Birkenau,
the story goes,
the death’s-head guards
sang, “Stille nacht,
heilige nacht”. Their voices
slid across the Polish snow.
The sweetest tenor was Ukrainian,
the man they called Peter the Silent.
He never spoke and he killed
with a lead-filled stick.
In [...]