The Russians call the US and European West the 'Empire of Lies,' and certainly the UK is now a very different country from what I grew up in - poorer, more apprehensive of the future, less satisfied with its government and the conduct of affairs at home and abroad. How and why did the UK become the land of lost content? The poem suggests some of the reasons, but is more a nostalgia for a vanished way of life, which, for all its problems and cover-ups, which were many and grievous, allowed its inhabitants to be modestly proud of themselves.
What can be done to improve matters? There is no easy solution, argues the poem, but a good start would be honesty. We need to get back to the things we sensed in childhood, which were indisputably real but not wholly encompassed in everyday language. It is what every citizen of every country acknowledges, the sense of place and belonging to a larger community. .
So this poem, which is written in very accessible and
simple stanzas to express what I hope will be the great homilies of life to most readers. There are no clever arguments
here, or Modernist tricks of language, but only the truth that should be apparent
to anyone who reads outside the mainstream press.
A free ebook in pdf format.
Introduction
But surely it was different once, when earth
was whole and tangible, when every day
gave intimations of a greater worth:
that in a country's past its future lay.
And so its literature, its dance and song,
its weighted syllables, that sacred bond
by which it held itself through right and wrong
were visions in themselves of things beyond.
this world of vanities? more strictly bound
up with the weather, streams and standing stones.
Beneath the vales of clay is ancient ground,
the hardy sediment we call our bones.
Our life was in the clouds, the wind through trees
in lives consolatory and stilled at last,
the frost encrusted grass that winter sees,
in springtime torrents as they thundered past.
Long days and nights beneath the circling stars
that gave some motion to our breathing skin:
we sense the hush on lawns and reservoirs
as evening filtered through the breath within.
The smell of bitumen and new mown grass,
and powdery exhalations of the earth
as soil in sun-dried hour by hour must pass
in phased effusions, in the shadowed birth
of moths with pheromones and dusky wings,
the last of bees whose drowsy hum is lost
into a taffeta of rustling things,
which then the madcap zigzag bat has crossed.
But now the vast illusions fade away,
the hearty comradeship had other ends,
no common effort then can long withstay
a past remaindered for its dividends.
Where are they now but in retirement homes?
Odd dates they mumble on are nowhere known.
The grass sprouts thickly on unrollered loams;
no wills or gravestones prove Rosetta Stone.
A mix of slums and industry was right
to keep the chandeliers still burning bright.
