THE TEXT
(“Who Killed Cock Robin?”)
Act 1.
I. The End of the Line
Squire Peacock lounges over the white marble floor,
No rope round his neck; no knife in his back,
No candlestick pestling his little grey cells,
Just the world in a virus, a corona attack.
All the wanna-nobs flocked to Cock Hall( ) last night
Snob-noshing beneath feudal chandeliers,
Watching Cavalier points under courtesies,
Filles fiancéd, fillies fielded, fences, finance, feudings, fears.
Now, as still as his statues, their host lies dead,
His white palace frozen and under a cloud
His Olympian, cut-diamond, snow queen is caught:
Clytemnestra clutching a red-handed shroud.
DI Ken Hill, DS Len Wade, in Conservatory with masks,
Bag up the hanky, "If you’re on there, we’ll find ya!”
"But one dropped it in Argos – no, Iceland - with one’s lover.” “He
Was picked up last night, with your diamonds, in China!"
Lady Peacock protests, to Chief Constable Melton,
"Why would I murder the Last of the Peacocks?
He's the father of half of my children," (she snorts) “my
Cock, lock and stock; (sniffs) my chocs, rocks, and frocks."
Mrs White, the Housekeeper, pure as driven snow
Blockading the Mistress from 'these lowlifes', steps up:
"Ditch the Peacock au vin, box the Snobside of Brexit
And keep all these doors to the Outside shut."
Old Iceni crime scenes and Welsh caravans
hurtling East on Celtic routes to Little England in the Styx
through a privatised transport of isolated bacterial cultures going West
(carrying the murder hanky) not to mention Postmodern Post-man
Pat’s bright red van, its owner arrested
by a masked Private Plod for ‘letterboxing’ 658 properties
and 2 metres up Snow White’s elephant SUV rear
stockpiled with shopping while the NHS serves on empty
and her souvenir edition of the Daily Authoritarian Past Tense Straight Linear Cause-Effect Oxygen-Supply-Demand Semi-Detached Bourgeois Realist Plot In-My-Beginning Is-My-Middle-England-Ever-After Revenge Narrative
heavy with the story of Mrs White’s extinction-
replacement by Dr Orchid, Dr Black's secret daughter,
behind a self-serving fox in a diva’s dj
jeering in from the hard right down the middle of the road
to upstage White’s extinction rebellion
biting the empty hands that don’t clap it
snarling who’d sniff THAT orchid? (“I thank you!”)
and barking about National Health Servants who “need to be applauded to do their jobs”
Block the Boudicca Trail up the B666. "This
Ain't the road to ‘Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch’ *
This is the road to Dis."
The Brown Lady appears with a headless Dr Black,
Are you seeing ghosts, milady, or old sins coming back?
Snow White takes them out in a panic attack:
"Not part of the cult-cha; not part of the pack!"
* “The church of St Mary in a hollow of white hazel, near to the rapid whirlpool and to St Tisilio church, near to a red cave” (A vital clue revealing the entire narrative of the murder and the identity of the murderer in an ancient encryption. Not lost on Chris Rea).
II. Cock Hall
When Dr Blake was murdered, I knew I’d be next,
“There IS a society.” Black wrote it. I ran it. My Eden
Was his word plot until Eve let the Colonel in. Mustard’s
Speechless-rage counter-plotters killed Blak to kill the vision;
Killed me for my kenning Hall: its Saxon foundation;
Its Civil War change of hands; its New Age victory diggers
For Boudicca’s grave Gone West, her wild la mére chariot reined
Like a drop into timeless Ocean, clocked in Roman figures;
My built-on-Boudicca’s grave (hence the diggers can’t find it)
Roman-floored; Saxon-earthed; Viking-treasured; Norman-castled;
Priory-rubbled; black corpse cellared, mad wife atticed;
Heritage theme-parked, ancestral seat of Little England;
Its Camelot-Spooked Room 101 A, filled with death kites from China;
Its Dorothy Walpole Townshend Whig Brown Lady’s
Dis-Embody of a sunset on a huge pink map
Dis-Honouring its debts in the East and West Indies;
Its levelling reputation as the nest of a Robin Hood
Gone Green on growth, employment, health, social justice
And of a Walpole, lending world colossus perspective
To Mustard’s private-I-sations; his pigmy Empires in the Styxes.
‘Super’ Market-Law of Bourgeois Realist Plod slams my casket;
‘CRACKS’ the case. Deaf to my howlings from beyond the grave,
Blind to Ken Hill’s hidden depths of Celtic gold
And looking in all the wrong places for a motive.
Arthurian Ladywell flood-rocks out in the Styx
and crossroad crews of freezing immigrant field-slaves
feeding credit crunch into inflated bankers
behind Mrs White, private mask off
blowing away the cobwebs
20 virus-people-carrier miles from lockdown
along Mustard’s Golden Guinea Sands into the public’s face
behind Joyce, Dr Black’s typist, singing
“a Blake more born in Barbary” by William Bloke
at the wheel of her green man van (an Odyssey 2019)
behind the Clued Ouija Board late for a meeting
securing a pale horse crime scene that’s already bolted
past a testing kit convoy that isn’t there
and a video surveillance police unit chasing
a missed apocalypse call around the bend
into the long right arm of the law
waving its amputated left
STOP! YOU ARE SURROUNDED
BY ONE-
ARMED POLICE!
Block the Boudicca trail up the B666.
This ain’t the road to the Holy Grail.
This is the road to Dis.
The Brown Lady appears with a headless Dr Black,
"You built this pile on African slaves, give it back."
Snow White takes them out in panic attack.
Not part of the culture, not part of the pack.
III. Ken Loses The Plot
"Boss, we need this result, all the Lounge Billiard Ballrooms;
All the hounds on The Eastern Daily Mail;
All the Skulthorpes and Death-Creakes of self-isolation
Will cue our coronas to Cock, if we fail.”
"Have a night off in Lynn with the Neighbourhood Watch,
Catch the best show in town on their CCTV
Watch the Linnets. Relax. The CC's brought in two of his own,
Old Agatha Christ-Eyes from AC/OCD..."
"We’re the Freud Squad, n’est ce pas?" bows ol' Ercule to Jane.
She drops a purled stitch and smooths her church lace,
Jumpy as a polter in Guist,"Oh indeed!" going pink,
"Cock Hall, like Hell Hall, is a very lonely place."
"And a Chaos of flowerbeds, imbecile that I am,
My ideas as deranged as PC Plot’s rouge-stained collar."
"There’s a fire in my brain and an ache in my heart,”
Coughs Jane, "of what does that remind me, I wonder?"
His grey cells detain her woodland-nymph foot
In a slender Paris shoe that mounts a soft stair
Of Victorian passion through seven dropped veils,
L'amour a la mode… Achoo!... avant la Grand Guerre....
An Herculean stud exploding from tight city trews
Hits smartly the small of Miss Marple's back,
“J’ai désole! C’est le crime de passion, ca!" But she’s hooked.
“Two Eyes,” hers answer, “to follow the murderer’s tack.”
Old Roman Remains and self-Brexit car jams
jarring up a beach road
through Little England in the Styx
jerkily mis-directed around the ruins of ‘Jerusalem’
Dr Blake’s visionary folly, originally a chapel;
since the Death of the Author, a shrine,
and, after serial deconstruction,
a pocket-sized postmodern pastiche of Styles holiday home
for Mrs Wight’s beach whale SUV
parked outside her fridge and TV
to save her the trouble
of having to waddle
and closing the public highway to the sea
by California-dried matinee private idol CIA heart-throbs
Frank and Mark Adams filming
Thought for the Day with Private Fraser
(“WE’RE ALL DUMED!)
Midwinter Murders
and an episode of Top Cat
where he gets the world back
‘for not liking me’
with the President of the United States
Block the Boudicca Trail up the B666. "This
Ain't the road to La Dolce Vita in Paradiso Elysium.
This is the road to Dis."
The Brown Lady appears with a headless Dr Blake,
Tarot card Britains facing forward and back.
Snow White takes them out in a panic attack:
"Not part of the cult-cha; not part of the pack!"
IV. The Seat of Power
In a waking dream of un-buried murder,
Christie’s Argus ‘Eyes’ descend to the gun room below,
"Under all the tall storeys and ivory towers,
At the base of the noble mind, here, we know.
The viral Prof Plum has Scarlet’s software on his hard-drive!
"In your what-happens-next, whodunit waits upon 'I would'
Your class is the village's vampire, my child,
The dead past sucking its rosy future's blood.
"Now your father lies dead in a corona of thorns,
Evil future injected in God’s old lead money veins,
Play their Roman church candle shtick Fall Guy- and boom!
Nothing on earth to lose but your chains."
"All those grey, blue-rinsed, white lies they told me, Aunt Jane!
For that ethical farmer, so reverend Green
Just to ravish Dad’s blood-watered crops, not me!
Plumski's deep-frozen spirit was never so mean."
"But his youth’s fever dream in an old man’s fevered crown,
“Through your guilt”, Poirot cries, “is controlling your brain!"
"Life is Evil Made Do ('Made Old, You Old Maid!' sobs the Prof)
Or Made Good. Be the star of her fallen morning!" pleads Jane.
Prof remembers that spring atop the winter palace,
The warm youth he was… she has now. And then
To save her young heart, he blows out his brains. Poirot ducks.
Marple sighs, "An heroic, unhappy, almost English (dead) end! "
Old Saxon boneyards and island-nation-sand-rammed
white builders' man-vans behind a fallen apple tree
not to mention Postmodern Post-man Pat in a moonstone-bright
Ghost Office delivery juggernaut for Mrs self-island Wight -
in her self-unconscious authoritarian past tense
daily dis mall newspaper that hates Britain showhome
straight linear cause-effect oxygen-supply-demand
semi-detached bourgeois realist plot in-my-beginning
is-my-Middle-England-ever-after revenge narrative
planetary-extinction-with-farm-views cul de sac -
of Argos ventilators; Amazon vaccines;
morgue suites from Iceland; gowns and masks from China;
and a private hospice the size of a small town
from Dis Mall Bathware, Kitchen & Hall
behind a rather remote-looking doctor
to whom she just gave her symptoms
being tracked 20 gridlocked miles out of Lee Harvey Oswald Drive,
Washport, by THE CYBERTROLL SHOUTING “WHODUNIT!”
HE CARRIED HERE IT IN HIS TARDIS! HE’S A NASTY MAN!
(“we all dunit! says Ken Hill. Non, Noes Poirot
“we are all the murderer and all the victim, oui,
but the self-isolation in the public spirit,
and the self-isolation of the self-interest,
are not at all the same
there is one here who murders society itself,
who is not at all le good bourgeois
he appears on the surface;
in his Chelski-blue shirts and his boots of Bahrain
and his Mend & Make Do & Die PPE Kits
of Little England in the Styx.
he is the one to blame; as the coroner will explain;
HE is the Cain;” “or SHE,” coughs Jane)…
Block the Boudicca Trail up the B666. "This
Ain't the road to Midsomer Maidens In The Woods Next The Tavern.
This is the road to Dis"
The Brown Lady appears with a headless Dr Blake.
She’s running late with all the traffic; she’s speaking through the flak,
"Krishna's Eyes in your Peacock tale: give them back!"
Snow White takes them out in a panic attack:
"Not part of the cult-cha; not part of the pack!"
Act 2.
I. Colonel Mustard's Counterplot
After life's chokes and splutters, the Squire sleeps well,
(Mustard's unconscious death-wish to be Squire can't stop him)
But the Christie slams shut and England’s unsolved,
Not coughing in its sleep, more asleep in its coffin.
Dick Sparrow, a Super Head in the Clouds of (un)Doing,
Out of office (all) hours, baton-slick, born to run,
Guards the van of a new charge, retraining the House guides
In HERITAGE HOMICIDE HOLIDAY FUN!
"It's political correctness gone m-mad!" trumps the Colonel
As his bust of Dr Black is burned. "That pike-lip: it's
An original colonial design!" "Norman, you're political in
Correctness gone mad," says Miss Scarlet, "you’re Auschwitz.
"Your ‘omniscient’ Nazi counterplot with private alib-Eye
Would 'remove' PC Plot (and lady suspects from his scene
To your kitchen/bedroom ) wipe your hand from the Blade , unbreakably
Frame: Black for Dad, Brown for Plum, and petrol-tank Jack Green!”
The Colonel’s private Market Force glides over from Burnham
In a fleet of Chelsea tractors, each the size of his mother’s hearse
(As Eve falls) private wealth-cushioned against the potholes
To the Common, where a cold cougher pinches his private purse.
“When my Vikings scythed Blake’s head off at your Norfolk Noir launch
Of his PRIVATE I'S-ATION AND THE MURDER MOST FOUL
OF ONE NATION BRITAIN , I ‘solved’ the Death of that Author
But his ghost possesses Cock Hall, damn his black bestseller soul!”
Old Viking murders and self-escape yachts
through titanic migrant waters
spilling Undead Rule Britannia landslides
of beached red herring
yanked out of the frying pan of Europe
into a twin tower safety burger to take out
live far eastern markets
and kit-supplied far eastern science
from these global-virus-conquered,
Nelson Victory lanes
by double cross-eyed 2020 vision
under-cover commie chefs Frank n Mark Adams
(“Government contracted on a private number.”
“You’re a marked man, Frank”;
“You’re a franked man, Mark”)
behind the Black Shuck Headline Hell Hound
of The Baskerville Telegraph
chasing a wild goose:
a big game bargain-hunter in a mask
shooting 30 miles up to a Lidl in another town
in a top-of-the-range rover (clapping the NHS out of one window;
taxing its leave-to-remain out the other;
driven by no kind of need except ‘GREED IS GOOD’
keeping the wheels of capitalism and coronavirus turning;
chuntering “there IS no society
it’s up to the individual not the State how we risk our bodies
and those of our neighbours and colleagues…
until we need the NHS, the BBC, the RAF
to save our little I-land of alien nation)
Block the Boudicca Trail up the B666. "This
Ain't the road to Valhalla in the Havens on the Haystacks next the Sea.
This is the road to Dis."
The Brown Lady appears with a headless Dr Black,
Ghosts of an Empire Colonel Mustard wants back;
Snow Wolf takes them out in a panic attack:
"Not part of the cult-cha; not part of the pack!"
II. Captain Hastings’ Elimination
I’m snowed in at The King’s Head by holiday Homers
Who park three 4 by 4s EACH in lanes built for the horse!
And a Berlin Wall roadworks winter-timed by the council
To suit this Public House not the PUBLIC of course.
It can’t be Scarlet, though she Nayed the squire her father
And his bridal nomination, she loved them both (sur)really;
Her flirtation with the Prof was just a lovely filly’s folly
With an NHS-under-bed Red, a free and PPEasy.
“Nor Royalist Lady Peacock, though she ‘Dissed’ the squire her husband’s
Agreeing their daughter’s union with Radical Green Jack
Well, we know who wore the jodhpurs in the Peacock marriage.
No need to kill a spouse she could whip to Dis - and back;
“Nor the Colonel with his Nasser-splintered one-eye Eden glass
And private fly that saw him die for Eve’s attention since Eton,
Private selfies on the Oedipus trail, rewarded then, as now,
With Abel’s Caining and that private after-healthcare with matron.
(“Not on our NHS that hawks, with bright crack-papering bills,
ALL FOR SOME; SOMME FOR ALL; NO FUTURE; NO VACCINE; NO ANTIBIOTICS
But why we need an implant and a whitening root canal
And ALL the latest BARGAINS in surgical cosmetics!!!)
“Nor Black & Brown, whose Looks could, couldn’t Murder in a Library
From which they’ve been expired. Nor Jack the Public Green
In a Scarlet Study: he gave me his Old School word. And so
Beyond our DI Ken, a Last Trump over Poirot… it can only… have been:
M-m-m-AAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH -”
Old Civil War siege-works and laughing Cavalier
one eyed lockdown-breaking
Good King Charles Interpretation of History pub-tours
sponsored by Specsavers (should have gone to Oedipus)
2020 vision private double-cross four-eyed by Kentucky-fried,
California-dried CIA agents Frank n Mark Adams
(“Government contracted on a private number”
“You’re a marked man, Frank”;
“You’re a franked man, Mark”)
staking out a lost Castle of Perseverance
in an angel-wing mirror
cracked from side to side
between the Word on the street
and a Marlow hip-pocket vision of the bay
It’s a paradise… lost:
fig leaves and Freudian slips
on the new line between the public
and the private
I
still working the First Murder case
from dawn to dewy Eve like
FOREVER because WE dunnit, Mark.
(you mean like Oedipus, Frank?
Oedipus is all right if you like modern.
I mean like CAIN, Mark)
gridlocked
behind a coffin cul de sac
parallel nosy parker
in a white elephant SUV
with out of real estate plates
Block the Boudicca trail up the B666.
This ain’t the road to a New Model Millennium of the Saints.
This is the Road to Dis.
The Brown Lady appears with a headless Dr. Black
And an All-in-all Saints commonwealth, plain English Jill and Jack.
Snow White takes them out in a proud boy panic attack.
Not part of the cult-cha, not part of the pack.
III. PC Plot’s Arrest
"THERE'S BEEN ANOTHER MURDER!" over-acts the Superhead
In the dug up Saxon boneyard, then sees the grave’s for real:
Captain Hastings in the trench, a Norman arrow through his 'I'
Ghost-written there by Mustard as 'The Squire' who cuts this deal:
“I’m your born-to-be-General and life’s dealt m-me a loaded hand.
You can put your m-mortgage, children’s centre, white & blue shirt on me.
You can bank on another M-Mayfair house, another Grenfell hotel,
A neo-liberal M-murder case unleashing m-my Land of the Free
To trump as one (Mrs White too loud) “Build a Great Wall around China.
Send all the corona-sick yellowbellies; owlish Gretas; fires, bugs, rains;
Locusts, floods, foreign bodies, nasty reporters; hurricanes (you want
Fries with that vaccine?) back where the virus came…
“Mustard’s Holiday Hearths (with Chef ‘Gammon’ White) the new Kings
Of Cock Hall, will keep all our outlets open; all our inlets closed.
Together, we can carpet bomb the pinko out of this commie corona
With our hyper-ventil, market-leadin’, privateer overdose.
“Comme les généraux de mon pauvre capitaine Hastings à la Somme,
Your Private I’s too narrow, a troll’s blind glare at the Sun,”
Cries Green Eyes, glowing. “Game’s Up, ‘General’! Come into Mummy
For Supper,” pleads Jane. “NO! Let’s get this M-murder done!”
STOP THE TEXT!
“We harrest this minimalist counter-plot against Who Killed Cock Robin
For asset-strip/un-solv/ing the Excalibur Brand of Britain,”
Truncheons (W)PC Plot, “No account for the Cat what killed ’im
Could be so far behind the lines, so blithely underwritten…-”
First World War Aerodrome man-shells Somme-being Back from the Front to be blown up the ammo-box stairway of their Safe Bilayati Homes
behind a ten-seater-one-man bandwagon right up its own ass
underwritten off through an ambulance
accelerated to a standstill by a Stop Cat
wall-eyed and simpsons-complexioned in the headlights
undertaking the middle of the road to conduct
Scheidt’s Symphony N. 2 in D Trump Major
with a riot gun and a bottle of thick bleach
and a big white Lie to cancel every reckoning
round the bend
of toilet creek
down the
free
way
to hell
mouth
first
“i will make you
phishers of men
- that’s phishers with a PH
world-sellers
- and PH WITHOUT the science -
if you follow
ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME
to the End
of the World”
(NO thank you, says Frank.
No. Thank YOU, says Mark)
Block the Boudicca trail up the B666.
This ain’t the road to the New Jerusalem Without the Walls of Gaza.
This is the Road to Dis.
The Brown Lady appears with a headless Dr. Black
And the ghost of the brave new world of the young, which no wall can attack.
Snow White takes them out in a panic attack.
Not part of the cult-cha, not part of the pack.
IV. The Reveal
Colonel Mustard, in the Dining Room with smoking Revolver,
Asks where any secret passage to Happiness is.
"There's no Way Out," sighs Eve Lady Peacock, "no 4-cornered flights
From this Clued-Ouija Board, just the Night Train to Dis.”
DIS APPEARS! The plot convenes. The Freud Squad Argus-pans. “We indict!
In every room. With every weapon... The Snow Queen of Has-beens,
The Black and Cock Robin, breakfast cereal murderin’ … MRS WHITE!" …..
"I ’AD TO BLEACH THE ’OUSE OF ALL THE BLACKS, BROWNS AND GREENS!”
“You’re not Lady Peacock!” Mustard tears off her mask,
“What have done with my Lady P?” “I AM her and shall forever be
Eng-land as it is in Heritage! Your Lady Daily Male, your buried Hastings,
Your Mustard-servin’ Cod-Psycho Private I, survivin’! Your ‘Me.’ Marry Me!”
Mrs White is marched away and Winter goes with her.
Spring is back on the menu, multi-coloured and diverse.
Dis approves as Jack Green is betrothed to Miss Scarlet;
Dis agrees as Poirot blossoms and a primrose Jane demurs.
Dis untangles the Brown Lady, reveals Parvati-Proserpina
In a Wife-of-Turnip-Townshend ghost-disguise!
Dr Black blows his trumpet, England's foundations rock,
Green Eyes dances Blue Eyes into the sunrise.
V Finale: The (Happy, Everliving) End
raised stone age axings, raised bronze age barrow murders;
raised iron age death-works
and plastic age illiterate-banner-capitals
get-my-own-back-private-enterprise-
against-the-world plague wagons
(that’s my name on there)
behind a nose-trussed eve peacock in a broken ambulance
accelerated to a standstill
refusing colonel mustard’s death-bed proposal
of “a public stage for our private parts”;
overtaken by a hearse full of plum burnt red herring
undertaken by a hell’s angel
bat-released from lockdown
cresting the hill on one wheel above happy valley
blowing the last trump
THE HUMAN RACE IS OVER
AMERICA FINISHED FIRST
behind chlorinated cia agent frank and mark adam,
‘to be frank, mark, with a marked frank, and a franked mark,
we’re plucked’;
‘to be mark, frank, with a marked frank, and a franked mark,
we’re -;
behind dick sparrow spotted on a mobile
serially murdering squire peacock’s reputation
in the daily mall,
cancelling culture from the curriculum
(delete who killed cock robin;
insert advert studies for colonel mustard’s businesses;
delete break the class ceiling;
insert tom jone’s fielding, pupil self-assesed good writting
and speeling; how animals runed poor mr jone’s fram;
delete literature;
insert the ‘striving for comp
etence’ market brand academy
‘now the third best sponsored numbschool in dis on sea south!’
spinning sunset west down a progress-listing poster)
while serially overtaking himself overtaking
the long slow coach to diss
down a diversion marked ‘this ain’t the road to helhoughton
this is the road to FLOOD
into an oncoming agriculatural juggernaut…
leave the boudicca trail down the b666
to bronzed, new-aged, post-modern diggers jack green and miss scarlet
at the altar in the greenwood with the bluebells. this
ain't the road to hiraeth, that long-longing-logres-home-grief to be elsewhere. this
is the road to bliss.
“it’s going to be all right!” ejaculates dis
as scenes from the passion in an easterly procession
line the walsingham way
and heavens above
turn st mary's snowdrops through an orientation
to daffodils of fire
in the grail woods around all in all saints
through death, jane remembers,
with poppies,
to love.
dis ceases; frees parvati and the head of dr. black
as little england’s shell starts to crack.
its self- i-solation, its dracula virus-attack,
re-i -dentified with the all in all, re-i-dentified with the anti-drac
who gives the lifeblood back….
LOVE
rolls the die; his dying role; his ace, king, queen and jack;
ALL part of the culture, ALL-IN-ALL of the pack.
Appendix: The songs.
Who Killed Cock Robin? (traditional nursery rhyme)
"Who killed Cock Robin?" "I," said the Sparrow,
"With my bow and arrow, I killed Cock Robin."
"Who saw him die?" "I," said the Fly,
"With my little eye, I saw him die."
"Who caught his blood?" "I," said the Fish,
"With my little dish, I caught his blood."
"Who'll make the shroud?" "I," said the Beetle,
"With my thread and needle, I'll make the shroud."
"Who'll dig his grave?" "I," said the Owl,
"With my pick and shovel, I'll dig his grave."
"Who'll be the parson?" "I," said the Rook,
"With my little book, I'll be the parson."
"Who'll be the clerk?" "I," said the Lark,
"If it's not in the dark, I'll be the clerk."
"Who'll carry the link?" "I," said the Linnet,
"I'll fetch it in a minute, I'll carry the link."
"Who'll be chief mourner?" "I," said the Dove,
"I mourn for my love, I'll be chief mourner."
"Who'll carry the coffin?" "I," said the Kite,
"If it's not through the night, I'll carry the coffin."
"Who'll bear the pall? "We," said the Wren,
"Both the cock and the hen, we'll bear the pall."
"Who'll sing a psalm?" "I," said the Thrush,
"As she sat on a bush, I'll sing a psalm."
"Who'll toll the bell?" "I," said the bull,
"Because I can pull, I'll toll the bell."
All the birds of the air fell a-sighing and a-sobbing,
When they heard of the death of poor Cock Robin.
Lockdown (© Gareth Calway 2020)
Don’t go to work
Don’t go to school
Stay in your homes
Keep the 2 metre rule.
From the council estates
To the posh ones with parks
From high fashion high finance
To its slave kids in the dark
From the poles to the equator
Supermoon into eclipse
From the fjords to the deserts
Temperate zones to the tropics…
Can’t breathe…
Come and heal us with your caring
Then go back where you came
You’re not from round here
We don’t know your name.
From the centre of the cosmos
To Little England in the Styx
From the heart of Little England
To each human breath’s limits.
The world has come
To Little England in the Styx
Little England is the world
We’re all together in this
Except we have no test kits
We shut down too late
We didn’t quarantine
We didn’t track and trace.
We didn’t take the test
Now we’re top fo Death’s calss,
Lord Hee Haw dressed as Churchill
We are such a silly ass.
Blitzing Brits for Blighty
As the Beast in the East
Spits his cold War into Salisbury
The we go off piste.
Covid’s knee in the throat
Of your healer and your bro;
In this world war for survival
Every ally is your is foe.
Can’t breathe…
Except we have no test kits
We shut down too late
We didn’t quarantine
We didn’t track and trace.
We didn’t take the test
Now we’re top of Death’s class
Lord Hee Haw dressed as Churchill
We are such a silly ass.
