Papers in the thirties once reported
(perhaps, it’s said to be apocryphal)
‘Fog in the channel, Continent cut off.’
‘We need envisioned men, leaders who lead,
who’ll fill hungry tums with work-won bread.’
newspapers in the nineteen-thirties said
‘These immigrants, non-natives — scummy dross
We want them out! We want — not soon enough —
Fog in the channel, continent cut off.’
These radical ideas sound awful, true
But you can trust them, for they’re nothing bad
Newspapers in the thirties once reported.
The isolation, let by braying toffs
Responding with a customary scoff
“Fog in the Channel, Continent cut off.”
Twenty sixteen, and papers have reported
'Europe no good: We’ve had enough, we’re off!
As papers in the nineteen thirties said
‘Fog in the channel, continent cut off.’'
Poem by stuartcturnbull, picture from pexels on Pixabay
Most of this suite of poems was written over the summer of 2022, though this villanelle comes from a little earlier. They consider UK history and life from roughly the end of the Second World War through to an unknown future.
This is the final poem in the suite. I now get the fun task of deciding on a final running order, choosing art, and formatting for release.
The suite's title is from the opening line of the fourth stanza in William Blake's 1808 poem Jerusalem