In all our sanctuaries we sit at risk

  • The Parrot Repetitive

    The parrot in his cage is sitting pretty, hanging on tight. Meanwhile, Mr Toad is enjoying himself in the chaos he’s been allowed to stir up. Chaos is Toad’s element. It tends to follow him, with cameras. Presumably those who’ve granted Toad this scope find chaos fun as well.

    The first few lines here contain a whole list of references and ideas from the original “Speak Parrot” poem by John Skelton. Most come from one or another of the rhyme royal stanzas in which he wrote it. But Skelton was unruly and exuberant. Sometimes he couldn’t contain himself within the formal rhyme scheme and threw in extra notes and comments between them. The “anima” reference is a case in point. It means “soul” in Greek. In quoting it, Skelton is implying (I think) that the parrot can be likened to the soul. It is the soul we must allow to speak, the soul we must nurture and listen to.

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  • Mr Toad Goes Bombing

    This was written on Wedesday August 28th, 2019. Worth noting that date. During this morning, we’ve learned that Mr Johnson intends to stop parliament meeting through most of September.

    It is on public record that Mr Johnson has been sacked twice for lying. No rational employer would consider even short-listing him for a job. Yet he here he is, somehow our Prime Minister. He will go down in history as surely the only English Prime Minister with such a record. He will also go down in history for what he has done today. And, to justify it, he has said…But why repeat the words of a liar ? Why does anyone bother listening to him ?

    May Mr Johnson’s government and all his works go down in flames. But we need a phoenix to rise from them.

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  • Mr Toad Turns to Ballooning

    Mr Toad had just come back from his morning swim in Biarritz, when this was written. However, the smoke over the Amazon forest could be smelt by all the G7 participants. But among the wine glasses, Mr Toad appeared to get on very well with the American Minotaur. I wrote that, while he was persisting in his efforts to force through the UK’s separation from the EU, thereby threatening the UK’s own break-up, as well as destroying the sovereignty of parliament, Mr Toad did keep going on about building bridges. That leafy though rather expensive one across the Thames. Another across the English channel. Yet another between Northern Ireland and Scotland. The forests were burning. Mr Toad dreamed, fantasised, lied…

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  • Dust

    Lost in the chaos of present events, we – or something in us – look to leadership for orientation, guidance and comfort. And the same something perhaps assumes that, the worse the crisis, the better that leadership must be and rescue is on the way. And assumes as well that, in this chaos, our own judgement and choice of leader – if choice we have – will be sound.

    None of which follows, of course. On the contrary.

    It becomes a matter of crisis management, both within and without, since the crisis is unfolding in both dimensions. What best to do ? Just keeping sane, creative and kind begins to feel like a political act of defiance, on a distressingly tiny scale. It’s not healthy nor really possible to blank out the crisis. But neither must it be allowed to overwhelm the lives of those in a position of (relatively) helpless witness.

    And I keep writing about the developments, putting them into traditional rhyming stanzas as if to force them into order. It feels obsessive and yet inevitable. You can’t ignore the storm, so you build these little rafts, little constructions, platforms made of words. Does it help ? In what way ? Is it doing anything at all, or only confirming the helplessness ?

    Here below is another platform. This one is more ambitious than seven lines at a time and perhaps therefore even less readable. Again it’s an attempt at context, as well as satirical comment. It was first written in 2017. (See right hand margin of the home page here). I’ve just revised it to the present tense.

                             Dust

    This is a poem about gods. It suggests that the false god Me n’ Mine has too many worshippers to be withstood. Besides Greed, the angel which serves Me n’ Mine most faithfully is the Lie and it is the Lie by which the false god rules and will destroy us all. The poem begins with the first words of St John’s gospel. It quickly interrupts that great passage, but then returns to it. From there, the poem visits the Book of Genesis, a few dot orcs and lastly, briefly, Armageddon.


    In the beginning was the Word.
    Conceived by light
    and the power of human brain
    it gave itself to human breath
    and through the wondrous delicacy
    of throat and tongue and lip
    became sound
    became meaning. 
    And the Word was with God
    and the Word was God
    and the same was in the beginning
    with God.
    But an instant after the Beginning,
    unseen by God,
    the Lie
    stole into the garden
    like a shadow,
    the shadow of the Word,
    and slid between the wonder of I
    and all that’s outside of Me,
    and its tongue was forked
    and all a-flicker
    and its eyes were cold and alert. 
    Nah then, the Lie whispered,
    What gives ‘ere ?

    And there were gods in the garden, many gods –
    the true, the One, the God of Creation –
    and the many that were false.
    Nah then, said the Lie.
    I need some living space.
    To whose temple shall I offer my support  
    in return for my breakfast
    my “daily bread” ?

    And God the One, the pure truth,
    Creation itself, Alpha, Omega,
    the Creator of Matter, the Fact of Matter
    the measureless wonder of Fact and Reality,
    made no answer to the Lie’s deliberations
    and merely wept.

    And all along the Lie knew
    its way to go and where to rest
    and slid by devious means
    to the gold-clad tower of a deadly
    god of human sacrifice
    called Me ‘n Mine.
    I shall place myself
    at your service, O mighty
    Me ‘n Mine and help you claim
    the garden for your purposes,
    your jealousies and terrors
    your hatreds and your pride.
    I shall help you in this great work
    of poison and pollution,
    ruin and degradation,
    in return for a daily spot of breakfast –
    and let me add that more than a spot –
    a “full English” you might say –
    would encourage my loyalty still further
    to the point
    of not infrequent overtime.

    They sealed their pact, recognizing
    the blood-tie. And the Lie became an angel
    in the service of Me ‘n Mine, a foul demi-god
    with gold-lacquered wings and that familiar forked tongue,
    an angelised recruiting agent 
    an evangelist, a soul-stealer, a maker of creatures,
    creatures in thrall to Me ‘n Mine
    creatures of the Lie.

    And our garden once so fruitful
    turns to wasteland ever more swiftly
    as another one bites the dust
    to the glory of Me ‘n Mine
    to the glory of the Lie
    and another one bites the dust…
    and another one bites the dust…

    So let us pause now
    and study a few of these dot orcs 
    plucked from their robot squadrons,
    these creatures of Me ‘n Mine.
    Eyes right and glassily alert,
    they clutch to themselves
    at an angle of sameness 
    that spans the world 
    their dread weaponry of the Lie.

    Of course there’s Trump.orc
    Or Drumpf, or Tromb, or Dromb,
    or drum or tomb or bomb.orc
    dealer in dust, in money, in lies,
    who favours towers which flag his name
    and feudal walls of delusion and fear,
    walls that divide and also confuse
    fact with fantasy and truth with lie.
    Where there are tired, poor and huddled masses
    there we find Trump.orc,
    strutting and twittering, making hay
    and puerile scenes of fire and smoke.
    Not America great again.
    Each breath he breathes 
    America falls further from esteem
    and becomes a fearsome joke.

    But let’s turn eastward, too, to find
    a lesser though quite similar joke.
    Thus Maybot.orc
    recently demoted 
    on the orders of her troops.

    But when the news came through in 2016
    that four dubious percentage points
    would cut these islands loose
    from their true place in the world
    and in its history,
    Maybot glowed
    and made that day her own.

    “The People have spoken ” she lied
    in a hushed and reverential tone.
    But it wasn’t the People she revered.
    Maybot.orc was a pious devotee
    of dust and Me n’ Mine.

    “Listen to me,” she cried.
    “It is I, the Maybot, who speak
    and up here on high
    I’m on a roll
    and I shall deliver global glory
    to my fraught, distraught and tiny island
    and I shall have control.

    “And Brexit means Brexit
    and nothing has changed
    and red white and blue
    and stuff you, you and you.”

    And the EU was not what they meant.
    It was not the EU at all.
    The EU was not it at all.
     
    But then, neither was Maybot.
    Our mayhem and madness
    were not for her to heal.
    She and her government
    wandered through our wasted wheat fields,
    weak and unstable
    seeking support.
    Failing to find it
    at last she went.

    Rudely to be replaced
    from within her noisome train
    by BoJo.orc
    a Mr Toad of wind and wallow
    who smirks, stumbles and fumbles
    while Tories dumbly follow, 
    our Bullington Braveheart of the lie.
    For Bojo.orc has captured the engine.
    It’s Bojo and Dom now calling the shots.

    And BoJo.orc makes jolly funny jokes
    in Latin and loves it when we look at him
    but if in some Etonian classroom
    he was taught to tell the truth
    he forgot that lesson ages back.
    Bully bully bully, sings Bojo.orc
    My lies are irresistible
    and Maybot’s were so weak.

    And oh those billionaire barons,
    those global brothers in arms.
    They devote their lives to helping each other
    keep fortress walls intact
    and reality at bay.
    With long knives out, the barons
    range the public highway
    scattering gold dust, meat and wine
    on any armies round the world
    that march for Me n’ mine.
     
    In the beginning was the Word
    and the word was the silence of God
    and a child unlooked for
    asleep in the straw.
    And the end when it comes
    will be the triumph of the Lie
    that pours like dust
    from the jaws of Me’ n Mine.
    We shall end in flames
    in darkness and in disgrace
    not with a bang
    but a dust-filled whimper.                                               

    © Rogan Wolf, November 2017
    Adapted August 2019

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  • The Parrot Notes a Toad on the Hop

    This stanza was written last night after I read that Mr Toad was about to head off to meet Mrs Merkel and Mr Macron, etc. And Mr Toad is going to tell them that the Irish back stop was “undemocratic” etc.

    But today it turns out that there has also been an exchange of letters between Mr Toad and Mr Tusk. Mr Tusk’s reply has arrived today. He has performed an adult’s role in saying no.

    Mr Toad’s fleshly visit to Europe is due to start tomorrow. Will it make any difference ? Young Dom and Mr Toad do seem confident that all the nations of the continent of which we are still a (tiresome) part will succumb to the nonsense in the end.

    And if the nations don’t ? It will be so sad, won’t it ? And our self-inflicted disaster will be all the EU’s fault, they’ll say. And shall we believe them ?

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  • The Parrot Notes Mr Toad Grown Larger


    Today, UK Law seems to have decided that it is not a penal offence for an accountable holder of public office, such as a member of parliament, to lie to or otherwise seek to mislead, a sovereign people. This despite the fact that all members of parliament have sworn an oath to tell the truth, so that lying is a breaking of that oath ; and in the House of Commons, it is normal practice for members to address each other as “honourable” since honourable people can be trusted and dishonourable can’t. Today’s judgement seems to imply that lying to the people is on the same level as telling them the truth. Honour and Dishonour are just equal combatants at the hustings.

    Marcus Ball is to be congratulated on bringing this case. We are all the losers if he is defeated in his attempt to restore honour and trust to our political system. Democracy depends entirely on words that can be trusted.

    As for this stanza, it too is concerned with truth-telling. Mr Johnson, our new Prime Minister, has twice been sacked for lying. In any occupation apart from politics and crime, he would now be unemployable. The reference to Mr Toad is to one of the leading characters in the Edwardian children’s book called “Wind in the Willows” by Kenneth Grahame, first published in 1908. The pun is quite a fertile one – there’s “toadie” ; there’s “lying toad”…

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  • The New Berserkers Take the Stage

    Mr Toad and Mr Cummings having been making an impression. The “Remainers” are still stuttering and split. Can it get worse ?  It can. Mr Toad’s cunning plan has been to come out as a puffed up war lord, using his cabinet as his own personal commando unit. They wear identical body armour and are leaving piles of pooh all over the public park. “No Deal,” the constitution, the law and the nation’s welfare have all become tactics, all in question as the gleeful blades swing. Mr Toad is running riot.

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  • The Parrot on Sanctuary

    This piece looks back to when John Skelton wrote his poem “Speak, Parrot” in the sixteenth century. All these rhyme royal stanzas about Brexit I’m writing, refer to that poem, in one way or another. It is supposed that Skelton wrote it in the precincts of Westminster, where the medieval laws of sanctuary were still operating.

    In other words, he was living under the jurisdiction and hence protection of the church. The powers and laws of the state did not hold sway there. He could therefore consider himself safe, even as he attacked the head of state, Cardinal Wolsey, from within his parrot’s cage.

    Is Westminster still a place where truth is safely spoken ?

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