on strings

Epitome of England
A wickerman
Hollow
Manipulated by a few in the know
Leading a bemused populace
From troubled retailer
Past abandoned
Charity shops
Street homeless
Fast fashion
Coffee shops and cafés
A building site promising what?
The ancient market that inexorably evolves from trading hotspot into a foci for foodie emporia
Where sourdough bread is sold at soaring prices
Just feet from where the food bank
Hands out hand outs
Next to the poppied cenotaph’s hard stone remembrance of lost flesh and blood
To the plaza beneath the church tower
In the shade of steel and glass

That which passes is Art
Provision of a spectacle
Funded by us all
As passing entertainment
For the thinning crowd
Symbolism of orange life-jacketed attendants
An allusion to missing migrants
Anxiety rigid in their faces
It’s a joyless, dull dance
A Channel crossing away from flaming fiestas
Revolutionary circuses
And fun fairs of foreigners
This island where military cannons fire salutes to celebrate the sick monarch’s first year

Does no one else think it strange
That the men of the military
Sworn in allegiance to the Crown 
Demonstrate their firepower
In the capital’s centre
To mark the largest landowner’s unquestioned supremacy
Of this stagnant rentier economy?

~

CLP 11/05/2024