A howling fashioned from enduring hardness,
unyielding surfaces, privations, fears,
precarious days and uneasy nights.
A wail of despair, or a mute stare
of exhaustion and incomprehension,
at unfairness, manifold injustice, unending desperate times.
On the screens, the posturing of the latest Duce, promising that
things not working will work better;
but still they do not work.
Only now they don’t work… plus it’s muddy, cold,
and the Bitterness Marches snake from
discontent to discontent, rancour to rancour.
Summoned by exhortation, parade, chants,
appeals to vilify and repel the common enemy,
the dispossessed are possessed by the demons of Outrage and Righteous Indignation.
The repetitions are as ghastly as they are predictable,
seemingly impervious to lesson, witness, histories:
Valour at the Front, Mentioned in Despatches; so are recast the iron myths.
The infidel / apostate / misguided / impure,
are again exposed, marked, hounded, expelled; along with
those who would take our warm-water port, our mineral deposits.
It is dispiriting.
The cudgel enhanced to rocket, battering ram to gas.
(The banning and burning of words remains).
The waving of flags: The Stainless Banner, Five Star Red, Tulips of Martyrdom;
pride, beating of chests and drums, vows of revenge.
So it continues, as the earth drowns and burns.
Peter Jennings
East Sussex
September 2021
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