Inward

“We are looking inward,” I say,

the exclamation mark inferred

-by you- as you retort,

“we are looking further afield,

beyond your blue-and-yellow-starred horizons.”

 

I believe you,

despite our years

of disagreement,

I believe you believe

our former colonial friends

will welcome our petitions

and not laugh in our two-faces.

 

I believe that you believe

in Bulldog Britain,

though we are but pale imitations

of those brave fellows

on the pages of

the Battle Picture Library.

 

My war was ridiculous

by comparison.

I believe if we are asked

the hard question this time

we will hoist up the drawbridge

as some advised

all those years ago.

 

Trump is no Roosevelt,

he’s not even a Reagan

and there is no Churchill

waiting in the Whitehall Wings.

 

Yet we are looking inward,

safe in our island fortress,

The antipodes are not our saviours,

why should they be?

 

“We’ve never had it so good,”

a sound-bite avant-la-lettre

which “we” did he mean?

Not you, not me, not my father

or any of many working men.

 

The horror, the horror!

Rickets, TB, polio:

history book diseases.

We are merely fat:

as fatted as calves,

we are veal,

we are capital.

 

I believe you believe;

that is what I’m afraid of.

 

You are looking inward.

You are looking backward.

We are looking foolish.