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    Grocott's Mail
    You are at:Home»ARTS & LIFE»Poetic Licence
    ARTS & LIFE

    Poetic Licence

    Grocott's Mail ContributorsBy Grocott's Mail ContributorsNovember 12, 2018No Comments2 Mins Read
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    Having marched with hundreds of others to the City Hall today to demand the recall of our thoroughly inept municipal leaders, I was reminded of a poem written in 1937 by John Betjeman about the English town of Slough which in his view had been allowed to decay into something close to ruin. It begins:

    Come friendly bombs and fall on Slough!
    It isn’t fit for humans now,
    There isn’t grass to graze a cow.
    Swarm over, Death!

    Slough Revisited

    (after John Betjeman)

    Clean up the junk of Grahamstown,
    the cartons that are tossed around
    as finger-lickin’ chickens drown
    in bottled beers

    and find a way to use the bin
    that louts won’t drop their litter in
    but swig their brandy, whisky, gin
    and build arrears.

    Come, heavy rains, and fill somehow
    the lakes and dams that often now
    lie dry as bone while fools allow
    their friends to croak.

    Come, leaders, spout your two-faced guff
    about how each must have enough
    but where’s the money? times are tough –
    it’s all a joke.

    Sweep up the heaps of broken glass,
    discarded diapers in the grass
    disgusting with their stinking mass
    of gelid waste

    and harvest the synthetic wrap,
    the plastic bags that fences trap,
    the trays, containers, man-made crap
    we almost taste.

    This lovely town is filthy – how
    did we, her citizens, allow
    such things to happen? True, right now
    we’re badly led:

    our sick municipality,
    immersed in illegality,
    won’t work or care, can’t think, can’t see –
    they’re too well fed.

    As donkeys and the cattle roam
    the thoroughfares that we call home
    and fertilise the roadside loam,
    they do no harm

    but idle representatives
    employ their worthless relatives,
    roll out clichéd imperatives
    and spread alarm.

    In shacks and RDPs up there
    the people dream and wait and stare
    as berg winds of yet more hot air
    spin fairy tales:

    Come, simple sheep, repeat that vow
    that life will be much better now
    (we’ll take no notice anyhow) –
    the blade impales.

    Let’s fix ourselves these mammoth holes
    that burrow like gigantic moles
    across each street – let’s set our goals
    and move along.

    Those thieves and ne’er-do-wells who spout
    their lying promises no doubt
    believed we’d never vote them out.

    Let’s prove them wrong!

    Harry Owen

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