The parrot has just signed a petition in support of being in good national and continental health. Thankfully, those World War Two pill boxes along the North Downs were not needed, after all. The parrot wants to make sure that no one tries to force a present day parrot into an old, crumbling and nostalgic pill box. Thin red lines had a good part to play, once upon a time. But once upon a time is where they belong.
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Everything about the UK’s Brexit Agon smells of rot. For a start, the whole EU issue is fundamentally irrelevant and absurd, compared to the many truly urgent concerns that need our immediate, whole and best attention. We face real ills and they harm and threaten us. The EU is not, and never was, the cause of them. It is a distraction from them.
Then there is Cameron’s unforgivably irresponsible decision, and the Commons’ irresponsible permission, to hold a referendum as a way of “settling” the issue. A referendum is not a meaningful way of exploring, or deciding on, such a complex subject as this. Cameron’s utterly self-interested party ploy, visited on this nation, has created a national calamity, possibly a continental one.
And then there was the way in which the referendum was conducted – disgraceful, disreputable and, in some important respects, almost certainly criminal.
Which leads us straight to the highly dodgy and smudgy and suspect “result” of the referendum. Even if it could be trusted as a true result properly arrived at, it was far too close and far too suspect to have been a valid mandate for this extraordinary leap from the cliff and departure from history, the ghastly preparations for which have consumed the nation on a daily basis, ever since.
And then the multiple and self-serving readings which politicians keep making of that dodgy referendum”result” – all of them unfounded, all fictional. What sort of Brexit did the “People” vote for ? No answer. There is none available. How could there have been one ?
And then, following the dodgy result, we should note the “disappearance” of (at the very least) 50% of the population from the Tory Government’s reckoning. The “People” they are “delivering Brexit” for, constitute only a small proportion of the people they are supposed to be governing.
And what of the nature and quality of this “delivery”, and of the people charged with pursuing it – the inept and demeaning and repeatedly dishonourable and anti-democratic lurchings of May’s crippled government in taking us towards our departure from the EU, the worst and most self-destructive thing this nation could ever do ? The conduct and quality of the Brexit process – along with the sorry creatures leading it – are as poisonous to this nation as the “decision” itself.
And the hopeless and dishonourable equivocation shown by her Majesty’s Opposition in addressing our long fiasco, makes the dreadful still worse. It betrays what most of Labour’s MP’s know to be true. It betrays what the vast majority of the party’s own supporters know to be true.
In all its aspects, then, Brexit is finding us out. And it is finding a nation seriously ill. So dial 999. Call the ambulance. But is anyone driving the ambulance ? Are the roads still safe enough to drive on ? Is the hospital still running, or has it burned down ? Is there a doctor in cycling reach ? Is that doctor still awake ? Is there a doctor anywhere at all ?
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The United Kingdom – so called – continues to stagger towards Brexit. The Government – so called – keeps just “winning” so-called “victories.” Under the so-called “leadership” of Ms May, our incompetent progress towards this terrible mistake requires us to shed our honour, our pride, our connectedness, our contact with reality, our common sense, all our best interests and those of our children. Who benefits from this progress ?
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I have written these lines in recognition of Mr Trump’s Summer visit to the UK. But what is there to recognise, in truth, behind the crass appearances presented on TV ? The squalling baby in nappies above the London skylines ? The humiliation of this small nation as it rolls out its expensive red carpets and ceremonials for this preening hoodlum with a serious personality disorder ? Or the fact that here is not a president or leader at all, but America’s Minotaur emerging from the cave of everyone’s worst dream ? The visit is just another installment in Theresa May’s dogged betrayal of the honour, standing and best interests of the nation she claims to govern.
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I posted this poem up on Facebook on July 3rd. Two weeks later, it had received 1,146 “Likes” and “Loves” and had been “shared” 5,210 times. The poem is by Michael Rosen and, in turn, he shared it on his own Facebook timeline and that separate posting was further shared many times.
Michael was originally commissioned to write this poem ten years ago, in 2008, to celebrate the 60th birthday of the NHS. He was the UK Children’s Poet Laureate at the time, but this poem was not just for children. He gave me his enthusiastic permission to include and display it on the website of “Poems for…the wall” and it can still be found there in the “Poems for…one world” collection. Anyone who registers on the site can download it from there. You will also find the same poem translated into Turkish, Greek, Punjabi and Somali – in recognition, and as a symbol, of the fact that all races gather in a healthcare waiting room, sharing our common fragility. Michael Rosen liked that idea, too.
Facebook was not around in 2008. But I think the poem’s popularity on this 70th birthday of the NHS is not just the result of this new way and opportunity to disseminate a good and moving public poem. Many people besides me are very aware that the NHS itself is fragile just now. And in the wrong hands.
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This is probably the last of my series of Parrot poems. They were written quite thick and fast through June, with various very topical references. Thanks to my friend Roger Chaffin for suggesting I use the rhyme royal form.
The references to a parrot come from a long and magnificent poem written in the reign of Henry 8th by the poet John Skelton. It was called “Speak, Parrot.” Its parrot was very learnéd but not at all polite. He makes a great play of being nervous of speaking out “true and plain” but was of course persuaded to do so in the end.
You can find my translation/modern adaptation of Skelton’s great poem in the column of titles running down the right hand side of the home page of this website. The Youtube version is an audio recording of my voice reading a summary of the poem. It uses pictures taken from the top of the William Tyndale monument that overlooks the Severn Estuary. The top of that tower can be likened to a kind of cage, reminding us of the parrot’s cage. Tyndale and Skelton were more or less contemporaries and both in their different ways were great writers, publishing their work in tumultuous and dangerous times. Tyndale was burnt to death as a heretic.
In “Speak, Parrot,” Skelton was focussing his attacks on Cardinal Wolsey, and possibly also taking a serious risk in doing so. My more contemporary targets are Cameron, Osborne and Murdoch the press baron and billionaire castle-keeper, friend of Trump.
I have brought these latest little poems of mine together under the title “Parrot Addenda.” The collection of them, with some footnotes at the end, can also now be found on the websites’s home page, down the right, under “Speak Parrot.”
Finally, I ought to mention that the very last couplet of this final rhyme royal stanza is an almost exact quote from the work of another great satirist Alexander Pope. It comes from his poem called “Epistle to Dr Arbuthnot.” Pope was not talking about Brexit when he wrote it. But I am, and if Pope were alive today, I am sure he would approve.
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“Taisez- vous, Parrot, tenez vous coy !” cries Galathea. “You said earlier you’d taisez -vous, but still you go on ! Have you forgotten all your Tudor French ?”
But then we read : “Haec res acu tangitur, Parrot, par ma foy.”
It’s Galathea again, or someone, speaking to Skelton in Tudor French and Latin. She means : “That hit the nail on the head, by my faith.”
She doesn’t know whether to give the Parrot a juicy date to encourage him to continue, or put a cloth over his head to make him shut up !
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