I thought I’d get a job in Switzerland
waiting tables, taking orders and
existing in a hole the Swiss permit,
but Rousseau must not have had it writ.
I’d sit and watch the water of the earth
spring forth and counter this employment dearth.
Yet water on its own cannot contain
the evolution of this reductive train
of thought: avoiding England’s harm
by overreaching Empire’s furthest arm.

It started in the north – nothing mine –
and rolled down south: the asinine
belief that money rules and all is well.
This green and pleasant land resembles hell.
“Invest, my boy, buy low… sell high,”
and cut a larger slice of poisoned pie.
Speculate and make your castle grand
and overlook foundations in the sand.
“Work hard,” they say, but not “work well.”
There’s half a clue why England’s hell.

Of human kindness, I find none –
I woke up late and now that milk has gone;
Maggie may have drained the dairies dry
and brought a tear to Mr Giles’s eye,
but that’s a tear of glee when, at the bank,
he’s laughing at his subsidies and tank
of grain. It’s brimming while the poor
are too trod-down to hope or ask for more.
Dickens would, if you spot the reference
despite the academic deference
to employability and five Cs,
write a tale very different cities;
of Sodom and Gomorrah on this Isle.
In place of Angels, suited men with guile
enough to rise and yet be paid with gold
to subjugate the weak and starve the old.
On the banks they rest and prohibit
any outcry from the mob, they sit;
and, by degrees, writing truth away,
those pitted vipers in SW1A.

“But This Is England!” Hear the men-folk roar
while knocking on the Legion’s battered door.
With disbelief they bellow “let us in!”
As if their logic can bely the skin
that, covered in the ink of old St. George,
becomes distended and engorged
by pint and pint and pint and pint again.
Placated by the mixers – “just say when”
the barmaid fondly calls to chuck and hen
and, on a pedestal, they find their men.

So who’s the hero carrying the cross?
If Jesus walked here he would find the loss
of dark satanic mills has not been mourned,
nor has the armoury been stormed
by this brave Legion on their way to war.
The only blockage is the pub’s front door.
While they negate their duty to the state,
both Crown and crowd are blinded to the rate
at which they queue with cap in hand
and, two-faced, decry the fortune of their land.

Reactionary, they’ll all link arms and shout
to Parliament to “keep the Darkies out.”
The daily pulp, emboldened by the fuss,
is fodder for the tribe JobcentrePlus
who, indoctrinated into crime and gore,
extol the virtues of a high-class whore.
Idolise the icon, burn the calf,
then mouth a token prayer, but only half
directed at a loving God, the other side
of you demands a bigger telly for your pride.
If money-mongering will make your name,
then fealty to Islam is to blame
for raided pension funds and tax-evasion.
Blame the immigrant and crucify the Asian
for taking work that’s offered, cash in hand.
Perhaps this is the virus of the land?
Forgive, forget benediction in a story
(for thine truly is the power and the glory);
profligate thy hubris, but know well:
there’s always room for both of us in hell.

Ian Miller 2013.