Tags
BREXIT, Britain, British, decline, Empire, Ending, entropy, poem, poetry, Postcolonial, postmodern
WHEN I RETURNED
“entrenched and calcifying
class stratifications”
Gary Youngewhen I returned
everything was crumbling
but not in that happy
melt-in-the-mouth sort of waya land of
broken statueshistorical memories
grown ever more painful
with each passing yearonce this
machine workedonce it ran on ahead
outstripped the pack
at full steambut now how bleak
how dour
cement coloured skies
divulging near toxic rainthat somehow, magically,
stays within official limits
and so no one gets sick
no
discernible ailmentsand there the images
that once rejuvenated
reminded us of
the great musical hall and
other popular traditions
feeding into
the great Beatlesque
transformations of identityanarchy in the late 70s
along those stone cobbled streets
where my grandad
returned from war with
dream of starting a familychipped, cracked
whose face is that
did they ever see this Britain, this
England comingnot just rejuvenated, but
rising from the dead
(form an
all-star dead rock band
with John and Jimmy and George
and Mary and Percy
who wrote such blistering
odes in mode
of truth to power)but now
not a whimper of
that poetrycannot call it
a wasteland because it’s all
too hypothetical, digital and
completely plasticatedno memory of
what went blitz as it
streaked across
the channelwhat went bang and
what Guy Fawkes cracker could
remove every stone, every blade
of grass
the name of every citythose names whose esteemed truth you cling to
when theIr failures shone brighter
than the brightest searchlightwhy we
need the darknessfor their
power to grow
and growempirically, imperially, universally,
exponentiallyuntil the
bubble burstso fatally
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