Independence Day
It’s June, it’s Independence Day,
The turkey bastes itself at will –
This most unholy Hogmanay
Is celebrated, voices shrill:
When those they raised in different shores
Were ushered back without applause.
It’s Independence Day. We lift
Our tankards to the British style:
To welcome others with the gift
Of sanctimony, spit and bile;
When visitors receive our rancour
If they don’t share our lingua franca.
Today we all commemorate
A mean and peevish state of mind,
The founding of our parlous state
By leaving principles behind –
The day we turned our pockmarked face
Against the foreigner’s embrace.
On Independence Day we strain
To hear our founder-father’s phrase,
As liberal, generous, humane,
We carry on our separate ways –
We cheer our fine and mighty species
And treat the rest like canine faeces.
It’s June the 23rd: we’re free
To be ourselves, as happy gluttons,
To gaze, and self-indulgently,
Upon our monstrous belly buttons;
To choose our laws, to cherry pick
The rules that suit the very thick.
These thoughts we have while in the mood
To raise a toast: “Our Great Divorce” –
To know we’re English, rough and rude,
But following our perfect course,
Passing the towers, squat and mean,
By the border-posts at Gretna Green.
