The Thigh in the Wound

 

‘Your Royal Highness,’ he said, ‘I address

the state of the nation. Sadly, the cure

of your injury and ailment is unlikely

to be soon discovered. The Thatched dwellings

of villages and cities, rotten in their conception,

are ruinous  and their architectures,

from the first corrupt, now stink in decay.

The poor, as we have always demanded,

are unaware of principle and properly, the rich

lack conviction. There have developed

rituals for those who live as cattle.  In short

the falcon of order has fucked off.  The thigh,

female and frequently open and usually

titillatingly displayed, is now the wound.

The counter-eugenic follies and policies

of our shrinking manufacture have borne

their inevitable and illegitimate fruits.

Corrupted estates stretch  in a shit-stained

bandage to defile the fields and woodland

where supermarket trolleys parcel

and cage the water-table. Foreign agents

have been successful in their introduction

of an emin squalor into galleries and libraries.

Usury is rife, its philistines well-rewarded

and hygienically protected. Lust and envy

in their various fashions cosmetically control

much of what is projected or printed.