I cannot just argue or disagree
when my own country decides
to throw itself into the sea.
If Britain is an oak tree centuries old,
then I am a leaf somewhere to one side,
barely visible and increasingly wrinkled.
But the great tree’s nature
still courses through me
and my short life adds its iota
to the tree’s profile and gift to the world.
And this uprooting, this auto-amputation,
this self-inflicted banishment,
this “taking back control”,
tears at my heart and soul
and those of all my compatriots.
It denies us our being, our worth, our truth.
It is not a decision a People
has made, or even some groups chose,
it is a mere sickness, a blight, a daze,
a malign enchantment,
nullifying centuries, empoisoning blood-streams,
gratifying the lawless and the hate-filled,
ensnaring the old, the lost and the bewildered.
To say a decision has been made, a People has spoken,
makes mock and nonsense of us all,
our quick and our dead,
our nation’s history, our means and systems of rule.
Here was no vote. On what did we vote ?
What real knowledge did we the voters possess ?
Were we properly informed ?
It was all :
Let’s blame someone or something.
Let’s fear the stranger and all that’s new.
Let’s separate
one from another, black from white.
Let’s lie. Let’s hate.
It was lies.
It was abuse.
This was no meaningful vote,
no sovereign process.
It was tantrum, seizure, foaming fit,
sign of a nation fragmented, split,
in immediate need of remedial action,
a body lying in the street, call the ambulance now.
But hooligans gather round instead, not healers.
They whisper together how best to profit
from those deep wounds and that distress,
that mess.
Then they fan out
and forth from those painted cold-bloodied lips
the sleek lies and robot slogans sprout.
Rogan Wolf, May 1st 2017