Unhappy Ship

It has always been too incestuous,
This English oligarchy of ours:
The shields locked cravenly
In defence of little except privilege,
Most merit shut outside
With the derided multitude.

No wonder the whole edifice proved so frail,
Its Titanic immensity lumbering off course
Thanks to cretin-diplomacy,
With cretin-squandered lives
Pouring from the slashed social hull,
And the British Empire deflating
Like a burst zeppelin.

The Establishment excels at cover-ups,
As at obscene indefensible catastrophes,
so you rarely hear a murmur
From long-suffering common folk,
As poorly informed as led,
Though some of us wear our poppies
As a rebuke for murder.

The whitewash does not wash with us -
Your propaganda 'history'
Made by the victors of class war -
Because you are victors still,
Although your dominance wobbled in the '40s
When you had to acknowledge our skills
For defending your worthless skins.

But the danger passed.
You were quietly biding your time.
And now, despite your cries
Of 'radicalism' and 'freedom',
In fact you're trekking back
To more selfishness, more corruption,
More injustice, more scorn of brains.

You are full of yourselves now,
Waving your gaudy banner of 'enterprise' -
that euphemism to cover every crime,
Every theft, every deception.
You've dismembered the public dimension.
Wrecked education, health. You'd surely spit
On Cicero, if you knew of his existence.

What ignorant, barbarous pride!
Your tall hull taunts the sky,
Steaming away off course,
To where the quit berg waits.
When the crash comes, I shall cry:
'Nurses and teachers first!'


Philip Higson