"Resist the piping pedlar....... Choose to hold on tight to your humanity......."

Pamela Ireland's poignant, perceptive and pertinent poem “Choose” was written in 2018 at the height of the first Trump Presidency and the UK’s own deep social and political divisions over Brexit. It is powerful and prophetic commentary upon our times, even more relevant today, perhaps, than it was in 2018 as the world tumbles into a new dark age: Gaza, Ukraine, Putin, Netanyahu, Trump - evil and unstable mad men and each in charge of frightening power; Venezuela, bombings, kidnapping, piracy on the high seas, a mad American President contemplating "buying" or invading and "stealing" another country (Greenland), the same President justifying the common and shameless murder of a young woman on the streets of Minneapolis..... and today that same President advises us that “I don’t need international law” and that his power is only limited by his “own morality” – and few across the world or in power raise their voices in protest. It is time, as Pamela's poem pleads, for the world to choose which path it takes:

Choose

What maggot eats

a human heart

that it would follow

willingly

a sly pied piper

peddling old lies

who wears the flag

like a cheap salesman’s smile?

What dark music

draws so many of us on

cheering and chanting

in an insane dance

towards a truthless land

where fear and hatred

are the people’s daily bread?

Already unseen hands

tap out orders

as behind the wire

faceless guards

take children

from their mothers.

Who perpetrates

such acts of separation

from their own humanity?

It could be any one of us

when the only choice

is guard or prisoner.

Choose.

Choose now

before the gates close.

Choose to defend

the hard won freedoms

that are every human’s right

before law dances to the piper’s tune

and fear trumps justice

and betrays the just.

Choose to resist

the piping pedlar

for he is the reaper

in disguise.

Choose to hold on tight

to your humanity

and wear it like a hazard suit

around your heart

for you will need it.

Those who would claim

to buy their freedom

with the suffering of innocents

sell everything

a human heart holds dear.

Pamela Ireland Duffy 29.06.2018

The greatest of the First World War poets, Wilfred Owen said that the role of all poets and writers is to speak the truth and Pamela Ireland’s poem does just that, it forces us to choose the world and the morals that we want and need. It puts to the test the unforgivable shame of swathes of the American electorate, American politicians, and our own UK Prime Minister and government, who will not choose to speak the truth, who sit on their hands, silent, afraid or unwilling to say what must and should be said and do what should be done. Their message to Donald Trump should be simple and unequivocal: "This shall not and will not be”; it must be said to state the importance of right over wrong, good over evil. As the great political commentator oft regarded as the father of the Conservative Party Edmund Burke reminded us in the 18th century "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing". If we and our elected representatives do not speak the truth then we become complicit in those deeds committed by those intent upon evil - in this case the malefic perpetrators in Washington who are supported by millions across America in the name of shallow pragmatism, economics, might and greed.

The world no longer pays heed to the wisdom found in Shakespeare's King Lear: in the final lines of this tragic tale of desolation and misrule Edgar warns that there are times when we must "Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say". In the terrible aftermath of the First World War which had wiped out a whole generation, as Russia descended into revolutionary and communist chaos, and as fascism rose in Europe William Butler Yeats told the truth and said what he felt in his poem “The Second Coming”. Yeats' words were prophetic for his time - and now ours, but this time the beast has risen in Washington’s White House not in Nazi Germany and it is spreading its tentacles across the world:

The Second Coming

Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;

Surely the Second Coming is at hand.

The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out

When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi

Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert

A shape with lion body and the head of a man,

A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,

Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it

Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.

The darkness drops again; but now I know

That twenty centuries of stony sleep

Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,

Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

William Butler Yeats

These dark cold days of January, the start of the year, are a frightening metaphor for the dark age into which we are descending. Bright Spring might bloom in a few weeks as the seasons change, but mankind is tumbling into darker times, a cold winter it will be for us all which gentle yellow daffodils, bright golden sun or the early morning blackbird's sweet song will be unable to cure. As Yeats foretold “….things are falling apart, anarchy is upon the world, and everywhere the ceremony of innocence is drowned”. The words in Pamela’s poem and Yeats’ warning from a century ago are profound and articulate wake up calls; it is time for us all to choose, to follow Edgar's advice and "say what we ought to say". The rough beast is upon and within us; its hour come on the streets of Minneapolis, on the streets of wider America - and it is slouching towards our own streets and to the corridors of power across the world; a sly presidential pied piper peddling again the old lies while wearing "the flag like a cheap salesman’s smile", the beast's Presidential "gaze blank and pitiless as the sun", demanding obedience and that knees be bent in servile homage as it snuffs out mankind's Spiritus Mundi. And America and we stand and stare, wring our hands, weep crocodile tears, confess our rage, betray our heritage, betray our fathers and grandfathers, and do nothing, and the beast leers and howls its victory cry.

Thank you Pamela for sharing not just your poem but your wisdom and foresight.