FLYTING - Number 1 - Brexit
 

The notion is to activate the ancient - and combative - poetic practice of 'flyting' in verse exchanges, focussed, initially on a subject/theme but always kicked off by verses which open the way to being responded to, not only on the ostensible subject/theme, but also, with suitable contentiousness, on their manner of expression. The practice in Renaissance Scotland was often a pretty vituperative one and we should try to avoid replicating that of Dunbar and Kennedie (qv.) but short of reduction to ad hominem abuse - without due poetic cause shown - the exchanges can be as robust and scornful as contributors have the skill to display. This will not prove to be a place for 'vanity' posting as every contribution will be open to withering assault.

There is no requirement to match any particular form. The only requirement, I am suggesting, is that contributions should be in metrical verse. NO explanatory epigraphs or prose introductions - just verse, head to head with verse. (Where parody/pastiche is involved, there should be the normal "With apologies to..." form of acknowledgement.) To set some limits, I am also proposing that each Flyting Subject/Theme should run for no more than two weeks before a new one is started.

So.... having floated the idea on the General Talk board, I'll take the first rounds of in-coming fire by posting the opening poem.

JERUSALEM NO MORE
or
AN A TO Z BREXIT

And did some Peers in recent time
Brace up to England’s ‘Brexit’ queen:
Could even bishops hold the line
Denying light to hates extreme?

Enquire who’d countenance such crap,
Foredoomed to fail our NHS?
Grasp, if you can, who’d blundered here -
Her sneer or hates mean men express?

If we had MPs worth their weight:
Just half the guts they’d gladly spill:
Known not for self: just good, not great,
Liege lords would lesser roles fulfil!

May’s madness will not win this fight,
Nor Scotland’s sword sleep in our hands:
Oaths scorned will stir, as Arbroath’s right
Proclaims our place in Europe’s lands.

Quite what Theresa hopes to call
Retro England’s truncated isle?
‘South Britain’ sounds so passing small -
Trimmed down and “cut” in Osborne’s style.

Undone, uncoupled and unsung,
Vainly prating Gibraltar’s rock,
When she goes down, the angry young
X-factor will supply the shock.

Youth, wronged by lies, some shires may save;
Zeal, minus sense, dug Britain’s grave.

(With apologies to William Blake)

Speechless!
 

Speechless

If I knew
whereof
I’d speak,
I’d speak:
I don’t,
so won’t.

I'd add my thoughts, but dursent try,
as Nigel's set the bar so high!

Ssh, shh! RCL I won't tell. You could always pick up the US angle on the subject or go for the poetic jugular - but, thanks at least for showing interest.

Forgive me Nigel, if I am so dense;
Your rhymes are good, but I don't get the sense.
But then, again, I am a Yankee chump
Who still can't figure out our cussed Trump.

Wind back the clocks, cut off the dialogue
Prevent entente with words like wop and frog
Silence the Ode to Joy. With muffled drum
Bring out the worst and let the chaos come.

Let strange planes circle moaning overhead
Confirming that the thing we made is dead.
The once-unthinkable is coming true.
Let all our passports once again be blue.

They were our North, our South, our East, our West,
Our guarantee of safety in our rest,
I helped to build the story, sang the song;
I thought that it would last for ever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now: put out the dozen;
We have no traffic with a European cousin;
Blow up the tunnel, burn the brotherhood,
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

Should Britain stand with any muscles,
Then she must be led not from Brussels!
No cog among like 30 Nations
Pipelined the E.U.'s last dictations,
No subject to its sprawling boards
And such dull bureaucratic cords!
k

Auden, it seems, is yet living at this hour.
Ann's channeling has thus revived his power.

Once along the Scottish Border
Roamed our Douglas, known by colour -
Either Red or else the Black one -
From his sallies, foes withdrew.

Now New England’s bard’s a Douglas,
By what tincture shall we know him,
Flaming Red or Black like night time?
No - he’s Brown and courtly too.

But this change, Trump will not favour,
For he’s haunted by their sequence
Crossing lights, from Reds to Black men
Then come Browns, his nightmare hue.

So he seized May’s ‘Brexit’ handhold,
White, if bloodless and retreating,
Shy of unions, prone to break-ups
But Old Europe she’d eschew.

Can such ‘special’ besties flourish
When ‘He’ finds ‘She’ has new borders
Drawn through Ireland, Scotland severed?
Exiles’ votes he’d hope his due.

So May’s looming, naming problems,
Like his placemen, long abandoned,
May unite the ‘Brexit’ shambles
Changing States from Red to Blue.

There’s a subject for our Brown bard,
Fit to tarnish all that gold glitz
Trumpery that only Hitler’s
Elevator also knew.

Dastardly bastardry!
Nigel unwittingly
took my good name and he
won't give it back!

Nobody knows it, but
I am related (though
only by marriage) to
Douglas the Black.

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)

A A Milne eh? So I've got to be rude. I can manage that.

Hi, John, I cry "welcome" to you.
This Spherean Flyting is new.
The trouble is, Dude,
it's not about "rude";
it's more about "crafted" and "true".

I have to defend poor old John.
Though the UK will soon be quite gone,
And the pound’s shot to hell,
I am sure he meant well;
Like so many, he fell for the con.

Yes, Brian, you're probably right
but that doesn't alter the plight
of all the poor sods
who knew it was cods
but lost by a gnat's on the night.

Your Harping knows no end in talk or verse,
Itching ways to re-loop the self-same curse,
Same Gloating point, go figure, as before,
Nothing is worse than a redundant bore.
Not sated by GT, you rush to Flyte;
Then, those who play can't beat thy Appetite!
So on again predictably hellbent,
You Flyte a proper Non-participant!
You are, if Brexit be indeed a Sin,
True Harper of it like The Puritan,
Must belt it out each day to rub it in!
d

Better a Puritan, who knows the price of sin,
Than neophytes of nonsense, who should not begin
To prate of NHS benefits that all were lies,
When those that they support, plot its demise.

Rather I’d hug the probity of Plymouth’s dads,
Who, narrow-minded, still were outward-looking lads
And cleave to my old continent’s cousins of kind,
Whose faith in their shared peace proclaims my mind.

For Europe, riven in their time, displaced good folk
Who, in this happier age, have shared a common yoke
To make a home, despite false “Glories” now unfurled,
A refuge for the weak, some bigots’ greed has hurled,
As grease for tank-tracks in a ‘Me-First’ world.

It's possible to be not Puritan,
Not railing every breath on one sole Sin,
And not your 'neophyte': You heard before
Of that thought fallacy of either or?
The logic goes like this: I robed a bank, see,
But better theft than murder, so just thank me.
Amen.

Swift to repy and swift to ‘fess -
The Manichean choice of ‘Yes’
Or ‘No’ is what exactly is
A Referendum’s catharsis.

No room for doubt, still less for truth,
Breeds the dishonest and uncouth –
Yet in the end there comes a choice
Between good hope and mean hearts’ voice.

The ‘Brexit’ pick, stripped to the buff,
Vain, mean and stupid was enough
To mark our era and its cards
With fools turned knaves – and afterwards
xxxxxA fracturing of parts,
xxxxxFirst of places – then of hearts.

Changed Terms. Not Puritan the way you vote,
Nay, just the Diatribe-a-day you wrote.
Such thing that I shall now no more promote!

g

I'm glad to be the cause of verse,
Sorry it goes from bad to worse.
If this be flyting, holy Jesus,
Give us some stuff that better pleases.
Stop harping on the same old string.
Put wit into your carolling.
Moaners remember we are out
Without the shadow of a doubt.
Scots, you are well and truly broke.
Blustering Sturgeon is a joke.
You know I'm right, I'm always right
And so Goodnight to all this sh***.

Some claim the Empire will rise again with Brexit;
Others assert that it positively wrecks it.
Who are the heros, and who are the wusses?
Damned if I know; I sing of playtypusses.

At last, here’s a Bard for the ‘Brexit’ -
Reduced to that five letter word.
Just crows on his dunghill, then legs it.
And arguments? Don’t be absurd.

If Scotland is broke, what is Britain?
It’s deficit’s certainly ‘Great’.
So give us our own cash. Make certain -
You’re paying for ’South Britain’s’ fate.

Our “moaning” you find disconcerting
But, frankly, we’ll never desist;
Europe’s wits find mocking diverting,
For ‘Brexit’s’ too dumb to resist.

And as to the charge we play one part,
Your ‘Brexit’ has torn up the score.
It’s Beethoven’s choir that sings our heart -
Shared liberty’s joy versus war.

Well, in the absence of a last-ditch boost
this first Flyte seems to have come home to roost.
We've each of us defended our position
by sticking pins into the opposition
and now we've fallen silent it appears.

But I've had more fun than I've had in years
(not least because I got to carp and curse
here on Erato in "forbidden" verse).
I'm ready for another go. Are you?
What shall we shoot in Flyting number two?

Today, above the wounds of dale-side Scars
I tracked the flight of raptors -
How apt that Drysdale’s flyting verses parse
The targets that she captures.

So let her, who’s proposed a second ‘flyte’,
Pick out its quaking victim,
Such one that best provokes a witty fight -
No quarter still our dictum.

The ‘Brexit’ corpse we’ll leave to ravens still
Its entrails to pick over
Though whence they came from, Mail-men's panics will
Claim “Vultures land at Dover.”

Above such carrion let our flyting soar
Eagle-eyed for feeble verse,
To spot, Day-Lewis like, which pens prove more
Truthful than those truly worse.