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This autumn, we shall show you:  torture, gore,

A Hanging, maybe many, a racking,

A demonstration of the verb to draw, 

As it relates to guts, nothing lacking

Which might show the English at their cruel worst.

We’ll employ a writer whose compassion

Is for violent terrorists and whose first

Thought, every day, is of revenge.  Fashion,

Though, tells us rather sternly we must drop

A Christmassy whodunnit, rather dull,

Because an actor in it is accused

Of sexual assault.  And we don’t stop

To ponder innocence, we’re much too full

Of faux affront, our right-on thoughts confused.

We Cannot Pick Cherries (Rondeau Redouble)

We cannot ‘cherry pick’, or so we’re told

For this is a trade negotiation.

In future, unlike those days of old,

We shall only appreciate cherries in juxtaposition

To acres of plain sponge, and the dull relation

Shall be tolerated, dross among the gold.

This fantasizing about choice, is just the work of imagination:

We cannot ‘cherry pick’, or so we’re told.

And these particular cherries, can’t decay, grow mould

What is cherry today, will be cherry always. This fixation

With success must end.  Our losses must be manifold,

For this is a trade negotiation,

We can’t benefit from being free, the temptation

For others to follow would be great, we must let go our hold

Of that which is good and forget innovation:

In future, unlike days of old,

We shall be ignorant, passive, unable to be bold,

So no cross breeding, for flavour, sweetness, size. The definition

Of cherry will be fixed, in perpetuity, financial services, not goods, sold.

We shall only appreciate cherries in juxtaposition

To an endless tide of humanity, a set of rules designed for suffocation,

Our loss, our poverty, our misery, a joy to behold

To our ‘friends’ and ‘neighbours’, to whom we shall return, in supplication,

Or so we’re told.

We Cannot Pick Cherries

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.

  

Still Water, Winter Day

A line of green and buff and dun,

Above it, the azure, cobalt, almost turquoise, slap dash sky

Dappled in little clouds, pale, pretty, fair,

And here and there a patch of grey or almost night.

And below, the smooth, polished cylinder glass of the river, where:

Dark horses graze the surface, from below,

Their feet moving gracefully, treading on tension,

Four legged water boatmen,

Their necks stretching to reach reflected shoots, which do not show.

And to the left, as I pass by,

Each turbine blade, on turning, casts on itself a shadow,

A wedge of storm, slate blue,

Almost a match for certain streaks and patches in the sky

Not quite as purple as the flags of light on sand,

Clay, and hard brown mud exposed at ebb tide’s half fullness

Which glow

With quiet dullness.

And as I walk away,

Branches of silver birch, bare, fully shed of autumn’s butter yellow

Shimmer, shiver in more obvious delight 

At the touch of the sun.

A Meaningful Vote

The demos, back in June, 2016,

Had voted in their millions for control,

But politicians thought this was obscene,

That governing a country was a role

For people better, higher, greater than

Themselves.  For foreign chaps have so much style,

Sophistication wafts about each man,

Who, schooled in obfuscation and in wile,

Has all the charms belonging to The Prince.

An Anglo Saxon attitude’s no use:

Plain speaking, wisdom, trying to convince,

Is just a game for mugs and the obtuse,

Those idiots who wished to bring it back.

The modern world requires a foreign touch,

The skill to rule that white will now be black,

Without first having a debate.  For much

Of what’s required today, is just excuse,

For poor decisions politicians made

Last week, last month, last year, and why confuse

The plebs, by offering some subtle shade?

So, in December 2017,

Our politicians had their honest say,

They voted for the chance which they had seen

To stop the demos getting their own way.