didn’t think
it would be like this
green murk
slanted light catches
the national fish basking
just below the
surface black lengths wait
sluggish broody & autarkic stirring things up
for a jape the men
see where
to cast their bait
vote British now
it’s an antonym to
paki spat in
the street but the
fish rest unmoved
as a terror truck
ploughs into a
celebrant crowd its
national day 100s of
miles away the
continent we no longer
belong to our
sympathy tempered by autonomy –
they’ve got our
country back for us
and now they want it
for themselves
Those last two lines seem prophetic of this hour, though written in 2016. Hear me read it all here:
This poem is from 'The English Strain' book one, which I describe here.
Bad Idea ((book two of 'The English Strain') is described fully (with links to other published poems from the work) here:
https://robertsheppard.blogspot.com/2019/09/on-bad-idea-and-reference-to-earlier.html
Idea’s Mirror (the last part of book two!) is described here: https://robertsheppard.blogspot.com/2019/12/my-last-ideas-mirror-post-election-poem.html
Here is a link that links to all the links to the good
things on this blog: https://robertsheppard.blogspot.com/2020/02/fifteen-years-of-blogging-hubpost-to.html
