The Latecomers

January 17, 2021


And as this faded world hurtles to better things

Advancing by evolving into finer sympathies

A surface surplus energising brings a homespun progress

Whiles those who closed below are drowning,

(Whiles thieves bands clowning in their sins,)

Remain remaindered, their works mined behindhand

This democratic enigmatic core of us

Explores the countries of the poor, draw offs

Rare earths

(Meanwhiles mistake for prosperous our tumid girths)

And metals, gems, their coffee; ours their very turf

Our hearts embrace their pain but leave them naked standing

Helplessly by

As much as like as other sumptuous hypocrites

Who take the biscuit leaving only empty plates

The nerve of our campaigns for social change

Leave them unstated

Here is our surface froth; our comfort sops are part of it

The agency of womankind inclines accommodation

Set that beside remiss and customised tied poverty

Not named in drawing rooms

Commiserate contentions mention ‘gender as one pleases’

In residence such rights abide tight in the bone

Entitlement of privilege lives always near at home

This coterie protests its griefs expressed as from inside

Implied deprived emotions call incarcerate run riot

No freedom candidate can live without this dangled diet.

As expectations teach, so those the nation peddle; 

This also baits and ignites harm

A rash of medications on the retail shelves

Make play to soothe - by entry fee -, with flush of

Magic potions

Dispensed - for more than pence - as Tantric harmonies

The cures to more conditions than pharmacopoeias

Can hardly bear

A smart salute to TV education!

Expectancies inflicted as mere going through the motions

And here’s a public bar, a dais of academic chairs

Whose long exotic beers are served in intellectual

Mugs

These fakes take burgeonings’ and pharmacies’

Leaves from their book

Propose to pose a relative agenda

There is no core; things vacillate; only relate

There is no centre

(No rice or corn dependencies in these their rare semesters)

So far have come from delving they with spade and plough

These featherheads seed disbelief and proudly, loudly, crow

Disseminate debate, discourse, excoriating cant

Having taken off in-orbit round the planet Ignorant

And here without much cheer they daily prate, berate,

Atrandom rant

A privilege too far their jar of doctored mead

And better had they heard and heeded Jesus Christ our Lord,

His grain of mustard seed

Than bottle wraths for home consumption, raising rough

Ungainly and ungovernable drunkenness on words

With pilloried assaults on hated sacred cows

The Bible; tenderness; forgiveness; clemency

Instead they press downtrodden rights of blessed minorities

And stir up fights, these their delights, for justice’ sake

A justice nicely-styled for taking their share of the cake

Whilst cake-salt, even as a gift, is in the centre

Where God’s heart dwells, and swells, is given vent

Grieved in compassion

For our procurers, who for mobile phones, and tablets

Rob sine qua non ingredients from daring darkling depths

In Central Africa, our lithium, our virtuous salts

We would not know it but these goods for us are dearly bought

We are of Dives; he our spiritual progenitor

And at the centre, Africa, is Lazarus

He who found the bosom of Father Abraham. ---

Shall lie when all is told before that Throne of God

Our prudent evils

It’s daft? And half the class, and more, might raise a chorus,

A laugh delirious,

Make humour of such mentorsdoing alms, enlightening them

Horrid the contraband for culture we consort, are tortured in

Expecting up on Saturn moons without a prayer or wing

There shall be set on Saturn’s moons, poltroons, such store

Before comes working in,

Are in the making some, love’s undertakings that attend

Amending menial, well-fed justice, and its self-led friends

For the better we shall feel a curse, til full contrition ends

And the tardier Jews come in