Channeling my inner Shakespeare

It’s Monday and as is customary, it’s all kicking off. Iran says it isn’t talking to the US, the US seems incapable of talking anyway, the British Prime Minister is in a tight spot, the stock market is tumbling, we are one of the most nature depleted countries in the world, and Arsenal look like they are about to muck it up again. (Full disclosure - I don’t give a fig about football but I am alert to the wailing and gnashing of teeth going on at the current time.) We also have just under a million young people (aged 16-24) described as not in education, employment or employment with training.

My blood pressure is rather high at the moment and I am not doing a very good job of practising mindfulness and all those things that mind help. The lingering asthma means I can’t go for a run. All in all there’s nothing for it but to retreat into poetry.

Today’s offering makes use of Shakespeare. I found myself thinking of John of Gaunt’s deathbed speech in Richard II. It describes an idealised England; an England often evoked by those of a particular political outlook. I tried to use it to fashion a speech more in keeping with my own outlook at the moment. Hope you like it.

John Of Gaunt Rewritten

This other Eden, demi-paradise,

built some said by Nature for herself

against infection, has made a shameful

conquest of itself.

This little world once called a

precious stone is set no longer in a silver sea

but wraps a moat around itself of

effluent to serve it in the office of a wall

to keep out those in need of

Christian service and true chivalry.

This land of such dear souls has fallen

prey to those who hold our virtues all

to ransom, our reputation through

the world leased out by those prepared

to profit from the trafficking of misery.

No cry for God, none for St George,

We turn those men away, their skins

too dark, their tongues too accented.

Our country’s bound in shame,

with inky blots and rotten parchment bonds

that ask us to accept that white is black,

that sea is land and subject to the laws

of trespass and all the while the devils

sent to rule us smile, smile

and act the villain.