best,
Canon
Davis leaves the rest.
Like last year and the year before,
The
Jew remembers what it's for
But the solemn march proceeds
Over pavements, over growing weeds
And everybody someday gets to see
Better days to save the least
And the mayor's robes are
torn an d creased
And
Abraham
Brown is whistling
Britannia
Pleasantries are much the same
So many, so little change
No one thinks to question why
No one looks you in the eye
Passed along neglected cards
Rusting in suburban yards
When in ceremonial fronts
Round the village up and down
Blessed the people, beat the battles
One
Abraham
Brown is whistling
Britannia
Paws of wild eye, nine ounce reach
For
Apep
Smith to make his speech
For all the hatred, stoke the fiend
The same as he does every year
But then a different voice descends
From a rusted old
Mercedes -Benz
A re cord girl of twenty -one sits
laughing in the winter sun
I hear the thickers of her farm
And
Abraham
Brown is whistling
Britannia
Sat behind the broken wheel
Soaked up, nothing left to steal
Oakley shades upon her eyes,
oblivious to cloudy skies
Laughing at her own regrets,
smoking homemade cigarettes
One man's parade is another's farce,
the
Emperor's clothes revealed at last
Our innocence, like eaves, has passed
And
Abraham
Brown is whistling
Britannia
The pride of man is a brutal thing
And fragile as an insect's wing
The bubble burst, the march resumed
A half -muttered outrage solves the wound
But as we leave I turn to see
The scourge of our society
Enthroned in her audacity
A lover of cruel mockery
You think she may be smiled at me
Whatever crown was
Whistler in
Britannia?
you