The Infrastructure Project

If one leaves a tennis club because one does not wish to pay the subscription and does not like the rules yet still wishes to play tennis, one’s leverage is not strong. One is a supplicant.

—Vernon Bogdanor

Democracy a tennis club?
    Yes, it may be like that,
Electorates are known to flub
    Grown apathetic fat.

Shall we revisit once again
    Elections long gone by?
Today we must live with the pain,
    While wells are running dry.

So many opted themselves out,
    “I’ll skip the vote today”
Telling themselves, who later pout
    Results gone so astray.

“I thought that they were both alike,
    Two candidates opposed,”
One says: “A laborer can strike,
    But once the polls were closed,

So I lamented loudly and
    Protested at the march,
In every town across the land,
    In my complaining arch.”

Another said: I voted for,
    And not against the lesser
Of two evils—a metaphor-
    Ic fist at my oppressor:

I voted for a candidate
    Whom I felt well and good,
Expression of my love, not hate,
    My heart not made of wood.”

The votes being tallied they had lost
    Beyond their comprehending
A foothold once secure, the cost
    Endless rearguard defending.

Position once of dominance— 
    Of “citizen” and “voter”— 
Slipped from their hands, lulled into trance
    By a snake oil promoter.

Only humility can save
    A people much diminished
In stature—lest to hell they pave
    A highway, freedom finished.