Here is a wet green island that lives on its tales of fame.
Here is a dying country, where farming’s an old man’s game,
fighting with agribusiness, whose twisting mists conceal
the supermarket trading,
Viking
raiding,
back into safety fading,
to hide how they cheat and steal.

Cities of sweating sunlight centre on crowded plains,
stretch out in streets of the dumb ones who rock on the morning trains,
risk not a nod to their neighbour, dodging the open stare
daring the eye to wonder,
seek what’s
under,
fearing a social blunder
nor chancing a call to care.

Poverty out in the country, privacy clutched in the town,
are they each other’s brother, scarecrow or whitefaced clown?
Nine to five work in the city, or daily rural brawl.
Taking a loss as duty,
taxes
booty;
Die of neglect in beauty
or drown in the urban sprawl.