David X Novak
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Paying My Last Debt to England

9/5/2016

 
Outside the William Aylmer pub
    In Kitson Way, in Harlow,
Where racial tensions clash and rub,
    Civility took furlough
— 

Two men being beaten, after hours,
    Two visitors to town,
Sustaining injury, as flowers
    When bigotry is sown.

It is the politician’s creed
    To stir up wild support
If public strife serves private greed— 
    Though justice be cut short.

How well they riled them up and primed
    The masses to a frenzy,
Pompous poseurs: invective chimed
    Leads to results all men see.

Farage, Gove, Johnson, IDS— 
    They all may take the blame,
For spurring disingenuousness,
    Rancor, malice, shame.

To England, for her “Mother Tongue”
    My poetry keeps grateful,
But let man’s soul no more be stung
    By her example hateful.

If England may not heal herself
    I pray we do not follow
Her lead nor heed an impious elf
    As whittles justice hollow— 

That little voice of unearned pride
    Declaring one kind better
In tribal faction’s fraught divide— 
    Of decency forgetter.

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