Pinter Wins Nobel Prize for Literature

Today, British playwright Harold Pinter won the 2005 Nobel Literature Prize. A prolific writer, his work includes plays, screenplays, prose and poetry. His politics are vehement ... he is adamantly against the war in Iraq and one can't help but believe his selection in some sense reflects a global community's applause of this worldview.

Below is one of his most recent poems (posted out of a sense of shame. But it is better to know what others think -- and be shamed -- than to pretend others don't exist):

God Bless America

Here they go again,
The Yanks in their armoured parade
Chanting their ballads of joy
As they gallop across the big world
Praising America's God.

The gutters are clogged with the dead
The ones who couldn't join in
The others refusing to sing
The ones who are losing their voice
The ones who've forgotten the tune.

The riders have whips which cut.
Your head rolls onto the sand
Your head is a pool in the dirt
Your head is a stain in the dust
Your eyes have gone out and your nose
Sniffs only the pong of the dead
And all the dead air is alive
With the smell of America's God.

Harold Pinter, January 2003

photo: Harold Pinter, John Fowles and Karel Reisz on the set of 'The French Lieutenant's Woman'