Friday, 21 July 2017

Back to Blighty

Back to Blighty

Descending through the steely clouds
Bumpy vapour shakes the plane
As we emerge from the heavy shroud
Green summer land in slanting rain
From Central Europe's sunny lands
Vienna, Munich, Buda, Pest
From the Costa's fiery sands
Exotic East, exciting West
Back to Blighty

Onto the drizzle sodden runway
Doors swing open, cold air blasts
From the steps the hurried dash away
The arrivals queue is not so fast.
Europeans this way for now
For how long will we be as one?
We'll separate ourselves, the proud
and glorious sons of Albion
Back in Blighty

Pasty skins burnt in far off nations
Our favoured holiday destinations
Drunken, arrogant, gross and rude
Where we got our proper British food
Outside the traffic coughs and strains
Empty buses, crowded trains
The overloaded network groans
And everybody bloody moans
In modern Blighty

No contact from unsmiling eye
The mood on par with leaden sky
Stiff upper lip in force again
Certainty washed down the drain
Young-old, left-right, town and city
One land is torn in parts somehow
Devoid of hope, devoid of pity
Class division seems so simple now
In beleaguered Blighty

Isolation, desolation
Truly a divided nation
Braying politicians preen
Sombre news barks from our screens
We wrap ourselves in our Union flag
Yet unity comes with its own price tag
Remembering glorious bygone days
The Empire pillaged when we ruled the waves
We protest, scream into the void
Credibility destroyed
In Dear Old Blighty

The world we knew it is no more
Empires have risen and fallen before
In revolution, bloody war
Rotten to their bloated core
We have no clue what we stand for
What now, dear Blighty?

(c) Tim Fellows 2017

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