Eulogy for a Traitor

George Blake (1922 to December 26th, 2020) was a spy with Britain's secret intelligence, who worked as a double agent for the Soviet Union. He has been described as having caused more deaths of British spies than any other "traitor" of the period. (He estimated his death tally at about 400.) He was exposed, served a brief period in a British jail, escaped, and fled to Russia, where he spent the rest of his life.

I couldn't dig up all the guilt
(you no doubt didn't feel),
not because of loyalty
to Queen and country, policy,
nor any dull, bladed concept we used
to starve the Irish fields,
to fill the workhouses,
and rape a path across
the Indian subcontinent.

Because, instead, of cowardice
when faced with extreme pain.
The information sold
to Moscow's torturers
was used to smash the teeth,
and break the bones, and snap the limbs,
to violate the very blood
of countless men who'd come into the world
inviolate, and innocent.

However much you dreamed
of worlds more just than ours,
philosophy crumbles
and faith shatters like coal
beneath the sledgehammer.
Pain is apolitical.
The bloody screaming mouths
and addled glucose eyes
of men you might have joked with once,
or asked how was the wife,
are what swims into vision when
the grave is opened for
your old and well-fed corpse.