We cannot ‘cherry pick’, or so we’re told,
Certainly not during our ‘transition’.
We must content ourselves with plain sponge.
The cherries, such as they might be,
Will be rare,
Dotted here and there,
If they are dotted at all, which they cannot guarantee,
And appreciable only in juxtaposition.
And we must remain mute,
Must not raise our voice,
But meekly surrender,
take what crumbs fall from the table, expunge
All notion of choice
And be satisfied with charity.
In future, it seems, there’ll be no innovation,
No experimentation,
No clever machinery, no invention,
All Englishmen shall mope,
Unable to conceive
Of ways which allow them to reach the heights,
To pick the fruit,
Sun kissed, tender,
On which they’ve set their sights.
And though in days of old,
Our orchards bore quite other berries:
Wool, cotton, coal, steel,
There shall be no new definition,
Cherries are cherries are cherries,
That which is cherry today,
Shall be cherry alway,
Or so our ‘representatives’ feel.
For lacking in imagination
They believe,
A clean slate,
Useless state,
Is one they can and should achieve
Through ‘trade negotiation’.
So we shall stroll no more,
On summer mornings, late June,
Stopping beneath each prunus tree,
Plucking and tasting and remembering where
The best bred branches bear their load,
Bowed down, as if in prayer,
Near the sharp bend in the road.
And soon,
Or so they hope,
We shall come to forget
Those things that our ancestors knew,
Those men, hard working, dedicated, wise,
Who, not content with what they were given,
Had striven,
For something new,
Selected, cross bred, endlessly, for sweetness, flavour, size.