This Scuppered Isle
(With my sincere apologies to William Shakespeare, John of Gaunt and Richard II)

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This right mess of things, this scuppered isle,
This earth of misery, this house of cards,
This path uneven, gimmie paradise,
A buttress built by evaders for themselves,
Against taxation and the wrath of poor,
They’re happy leaving then, this wider world
With precocious loan from those who are yet to be,
For those who’ll starve, the interest it’ll fall,
Too young to vote and with no voice at all,
So send an envoy with ill laid plans;
This curséd knot, this dearth, no helm this England,
We burst, this teeming wound of Brexit things.
Driven by their need, and hopeful of their worth,
Unwelcome now creeds who are far from home,
For Christians mock in true ribaldry,
And welcome not those who dress so differently,
Referendum’s ransom, we’ve been truly stung ;
A land of such drear trolls, this once proud proud land,
Fear for her reputation through the world,
We’re now leas’d out – I cry pronouncing it –
Leas’d out to a future of wartorn harm.
England, dragging others down into Brexit’s sea,
Whose rocky claws drag back history’s darkest page
Of warlike Mars, is now bounding with shame.
With inky blots and rotten parchment bonds;
This England, that was wont to conquer others,
Hath made a shameful conquest of itself.

©Keith Murphy