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)
|