Do we begin at the beginning
With the primeval mud,
The shadowed hinterland of untended wood?
Or the restless invasions of marauders and the hungry
For what these islands hold of wealth and power,
All who’ve left across the wastes of years
Crimson meadows,  damp and reeking
And gravestones rearing grey heads over
Generations weeping?

Or in cities, where the people sleep
Fearful as fugitives in unfriendly streets
Littered with the lonely, the empty cans
Of ravished dreams, the blast of children’s screams
Or the merchant’s cry from steeples and embattlements
The implacable enactment of a scheme
The cheapest price for the best machine?

Or valleys of shadow, clay under the farmer’s boot,
pock-marked, slag-heaped where burrowers toil
And peons till the soil
Such being the nature of economic life
The beast of burden and the rider’s rite
Wherever anonymity of name and place
Fits the normal distribution
The politicians’ pride, individual disgrace?

Land of beaten shores, sectarian rage
Stiff lips, horse-whips, freeze-dried tradition
The latest management and money-saving fad
 - Lear  naked on the heath
Hamlet crucified by indecision -
In single or in several lots
Attend the auctioneer’s voice.

No price reserve. We hear a bid?
A chance you can’t afford to miss,
Marx and Smith in close embrace
This happy breed of men for sale ‘as is’.


London 2003