Contented, stifled MotherLanders
staggering through
Bonfire Night celebration,
do you still burn the straw men,
the Pope, or old Guy Fawkes?
(Now, there's irony for you!)
Still roll the tar barrels all ablaze?
Is this the way the world ends
not with a bang
but a cinder?
Oh, we learned so much
at your feet!
Yesterday's friend is today's enemy,
yesterday's enemy we still scorn.
We dress him in a Guy Fawkes mask
and call him a rose by any other name;
does he still stink?
...and now
we've made the top;
more reviled than you
in every venue. Can you
hear the cries?
"Mistah Kurtz—he dead."
But so are so many others,
and the roll rises
at the call
and the toll rises
with each fall
as the role descends
into a hell
undreamed
and I wonder, still
do you still rock the house
roll the barrel
toll the bells
burning Guy Fawkes?
Author notes
I just wondered.
Comments
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I love all those assonances in the last stanza, it really rolls the barrel. I am actually descended from one of the original plotters, I always feel a little uneasy about Bonfire night. It was a Celtic fire festival originally, I think it was called 'samhain', could have been the new year. I like the Conrad & the T.S. Eliot reference as well. And you said you were going through a dry patch! (Nice presentation) You get 3 of the funny yellow blokes.
I enjoyed this.
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Strange.
I like it.
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You definitely can carry your weight when it comes to free verse, Eric. Excellent work. I have nothing to add.
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This is a rather good piece Eric. (understatement for effect)
'We are the straw men, we are the hollow men'.
They still roll the tar barrels in Devon on November 5th. It was very considerate for the opening of Parliament to coincide with the Autumn festivals of the old Pagan calendar and rites of the sacrificial burnings, the 'king' to return to earth in order to live again next Spring- the Festivals of All Souls to incorporate All Hallows Eve - and for Guido and the Roman Catholic conspirators to fail and not be burnt at the stake (that was the Catholic punishment for protestant heretics a couple of generations previously) so ironic that his effigy is burned on the bonfires. It is a mismash of propaganda , pagan tradition and Christian superimposition on the Autumn festival.
I am amazed at the power there is in this poem- and I love the format , the free verse which is reminiscent of Eliot's Wasteland, even without the references. I shouldn't be, I know, but you always amaze me with your versatility.
The Scapegoat- it is all about the Scapegoat. Once we recognise that there is always a scapegoat, the sacrifice, the tradition makes sense, and even when we get to the dizzy heights of sophistication which is the 21st century, we let off our fireworks in our Autumn Festival, light our bonfires and gather round them in atavistic homage to the Straw Man, the sacrifice of teh Green Man, the derision for Guido Fawkes which is not really derision, more admiration these days that his reasons have been lost in the reinvention of school history. We all know that he tried to blow up parliament and failed, we don't know exactly why. And we do not know exactly why we put the different masks on our bogey men, the latest sacrifical lamb, but we go on doing it, like we still need the blood to make the fields fertile for mext years crops, like we need to hate in order to the well oiled wheels turning.
The last stanza is wonderfully knitted.
Oh- forgot to say- the Tar Barrels have nothing to do with Guido Fawkes. No one knows the origin of that English peculiarity as far as I know, but it goes back well before 1606. Matter of interest, we regaulrly have our lunch in a pub at a table that came from Guy Fawkes' childhood home, contemporary with him. We like to imagine him flicking his food across it.
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