Nothing proclaims nonsense facts
Like a metre that good taste redacts
For the muscles in Brussels
With which Britain hustles
Are entrenched in the EU’s own Acts.

Twenty eight and not thirty
(A typo, by dyslexic Qwerty?)
And our nation’s relations
Have built expectations
May can’t meet, now ‘Brexit’s’ gone shirty

As to those peaceful accords,
That with pens have made ploughshares from swords,
And shafted Gog and Magog
By us each as a cog
It’s our peace that trumps Trump’s missile hordes.

As once with Erik the Red,
From whose Greenland the EU’s been sped,
Shipping seas, on false reason
Is trading-mens' treason
First read up - lest you find you’re misled.

As if the difference were so great
Of 30 States and 28.
How flowery be thy writing: Flyting
Light as a Dandy, vainly biting;
What poor excuse for riding
Thy Hobby-horse’s stirrup—
Romantic about Europe.
f

For a poet that married a Douglas,
(A connection that’s often occurred)
There’s no need for a sois disant shrug, lass,
Such a rhymer is good as their word.

’Twas a Douglas that wed David Lindsay
And The Three Estates settled his fame,
While one hitched to A Drysdale, I dare say,
Was a neighbouring borderer name.

So leave bastards and ‘Fitzes’ to others -
My own ancestors ‘claim’ they were Blacks,
But Macgregors used colours as covers,
Heaven knows what they did on their backs.

With Apologies to Distant Relatives

As the Douglas in question is dead
some seven hundred years
the relation is not so surprising:
there're only so many pairs
to sustain amorous flings--
***I hate to rail,
***but on history's scale
in one sense we're all imbred.

Aye, my ex, X, who passed away last year,
was not of direct heritage, I fear;
not one of history's dashing deceivers,
just a descendant of the border reivers.
I here confess, though, to a secret dream
that things may turn out better than they seem.
Should Caledonia triumph in this fight
a Scottish passport might be mine by right.

You see “Romantic” as a charge,
Though on it, you dared not enlarge -
For Europe brought your freedoms home,
From Scotland, England, France and Rome,
Whose Reason “happiness” set free
And charmed with “life” and “liberty”.

But not so charmed as those whose choice
Just follows every slavish voice
Whose right-wing rubbish, is the sort
That hails as news, each bent report
And pumps out what their leader’s tweet
Would have us swallow, raw, complete.

There’s none so dumb as can’t devise
A simple filter for the lies,
With which – May, Trump or Daily Mail -
Their riled massed xenophobes regale,
So that, poor folk, they treat as mutts,
Are, with a sneer, loathed from their guts.

A truth is shown in all of this,
That, only when things go amiss,
The arrogant and hateful face
Of 'Brits' who trumpet of their race
Shows what they are and why they suck -
The dupes of empire, run amuck.

As an "old holdover", I refute
your arrogant dismissal of my plight,
but my opposing stance does not dilute
appreciation of your fancy's Flyte.
That was a fine example of the play
that Nigel's thread sought to initiate
and though I don't agree with what you say
I have to say you said it sweet and straight.
That, Erik, was a stonking villanelle
(not "stinking" - it's a term of approbation).
You fought your battle and you fought it well
and I, for one, am filled with admiration.
You leave the field in spritely, Knightly manner.
Pity about the bullshit on your banner.
.

This is after Y Gododdyn and the lament of Llywarth Hen. Annie composed it.

The men went to the Flyting with humour and wittiness,
Keen were they in the wordplay, displaying their blades,
Though they came to Eratosphere to do battle
The inevitable stilling of tongues was to silence them…

The men went to the Flyting, loquacious was their host;
Fresh venom was their feast, and also their poison.
Quite a few were contending with weapons;
And after sportive mirth, stillness ensued…

The hall of Our Nigel is dark tonight,
Without fire, without songs.
Lacking warmth, lacking light.
I will weep awhile and then be silent…

THE BARD WHOSE VERSES WOULDN’T SPEAK

Of all Bards on Eratosphere
The gruffest was its Kentish John.
He versified in stanzas clear
And knew how nonsense rhymes run on
To pad weak verse, yet found it hard,
To face a ‘flyting’ Scottish Bard.

No other Bard in all the land
Would do the things which he would do.
Not only did he understand
The way to harbour words, but knew
The silence any Bard should seek,
Whose courage had begun to leak.

And, if he didn't ‘Brexit’ flyte,
It wasn't that he didn't share
The xenophobic ‘Britnats’’ fright
But felt it an imprudent dare
To risk, by metric injuries,
A cause as ludicrous as his.

Daily his Telegraph lay propped,
Splenetically, by his toast
And, if his porridge hadn’t slopped
Upon its margin, he’d at most
Harrumph at Verhofstadt, not May,
Applauding humbug on the way.

Some days he almost wished he’d sparred,
Not just in prose against some Scot,
Then, seeing some ‘remoaning’ Bard,
Spectator-like he’d, drop the thought
And, as applause for Sturgeon passed,
He’d snort a blow-hard’s Trumper blast.

One day, when our good Kentish John
Was savouring some Farage pitch,
The Sphere’s thread, he had wished was gone,
Posed, like the world, the challenge which
He’d hidden from for years before;
Now pin-point sharp, he felt it score.

The rhythmic lines, Gododdyn’s blast,
The bardic praise, the taint of fear,
These, and especially the last,
Now seemed to sum his craven year.
Could such spell shame? Well, surely not.
Something seemed different. But what?

Raising a cautious Kentish ear
John harked as bardic runs ran by
And, in Ann’s hwyl, he gulped to hear
(He’d rather not) a reason why
This Welsh maid’s, quite reproachful sound,
Needled him more than all around.

John saw how this would now appear,
His hurt was such no rhyme could reach,
For years they’d thought him on the Sphere
The bardic ward of Blimp-like speech,
A rude, unvarnished Chesterton,
Who’d slosh all Europhiles with scorn.

He’d rush to where his cursor snoozed
To click it into jumping life…
Yet... stil he hoped to be recused
From joining, openly, this strife.
The question not, “How sharp is she?”
But, “Why is this duff hand for me?”

For while poor John had so long posed,
As rustic reason’s common sense,
This ‘flyting’ had in verse exposed
‘Brexit’ as densest of the dense.
“A holiday!” he’d thought. “In France!”
And sped “to Europe” in a trance.

But then good Ann, and Nigel too,
Their keyboards pausing to engage,
Offered, “With verse, we’ll yet undo
Your ‘Brexit’ burden’s equipage.
At times like these, the stoutest bard,
Might find his past opinions jarred.”

One hundred days since New Year’s night
May yet bring John to realize,
A ‘Brexit’ that he dared not ‘flyte’,
His Muse is warning is not wise.
If ‘Brexitania’ has no Bard
In Kent, it’s what sane folk discard.

Yet, haunted still by EU dreams,
Our man of Kent in terse verse wrote
Of Ann - and Nigel’s scribbled reams,
‘One Rhymer He Would Never Quote’ -
While dull Farage, whom he’d liked best,
Blared ever rightward – like the rest.

(With apologies to A. A. Milne)