It was the SS/country Great Britain.
That sailed the wintry sea;
And Prime Minister May had taken her people,
To bear her company.
Blue and brown were their eyes, all paid their tax,
Their cheeks coloured from a hard working day,
And their *******/chests swollen as the hawthorn buds
That proudly produce in the month of May.
The Prime-Minister she stood at her lectern,
As vile words left her mouth,
She preached that UK's world citizens are
no citizens, neither here, nor West nor South.
Then up and spake an expert Sailor,
Had sailed the European Mains,
"I pray thee, put to yonder port,
For I fear Brexit' ruinous hurricanes.
"Last year the pound had a golden ring,
And t'row the pound will flee!"
But the Prime-Minister she only sought strife,
And a scornful laugh laughed she.
Colder and colder grew the UK's economy,
A crisis grew from North to East;
Family businesses fell first to Tory hedge-fund swines,
Evil wizards not bothered in the least.
Down came the crisis' storm, and smote amain,
SS Great Britain in its strength;
Its poor crew shuddered and paused; hurt by all this greed,
The once United Kingdom leaped across its length.
"Come hither! come hither! Scotland, Wales,
Northern Ireland, do not tremble so;
For I can weather our enemies' ordeals,
That ever they will throw.
PM May palmed the people in, telling them lies
Barking fake news on EU enemies' blasts;
She invented tales about immigrants,
Wishful thinking it would save money vast.
"Oh Mother May! I hear our EU friends' phones ring.
O say, what it may be?"
"''These 're false calls on shark-bound mainland coasts!" -
And May knowingly steered to crash UK's economy.
"Oh Mother May! I hear psalms of Brittany's nuns,
O say what may it be?"
"Some German Lorelei fiends, which only live
In that wretched foul euro-zone economy".
"Oh Mother May! I hear EU's peaceful plights,
O say what may it be?"
But Mother May answered never a word,
A frozen corpse was she.
Lashed to number 10, all stiff and stark,
With her face turned to the skies,
The Big Ben clock light illuminated banking blizzards
On her fixed and glassy eyes.
Then UK's people clasped their hands and prayed
That saved they might be;
And they thought of prophetical politicians who could still the waves,
That wrecked Great Britain's economy.
And fast through twilight months dark and drear,
Through the whistling greed of the superrich,
Like a tweeted Trump, Great Britain wept
Towards the reef of Farage's glitch.
And between the financial rust
Cries came from the people;
It was the sound of their trampled trust,
On a bed of lies and Johnson's creeple.
The loan sharks were right on the people's toes,
The country drifted a dreary wreck,
And whooping profits for the rich
were cheered by th'entire cabinet.
The country broke where the white and fleecing waves
Created poverty in the neglected North,
But the cruel Russians, they gored her side
With hackers killing its democratic berth.
The people shocked as British cool subsided,
When the NHS went overboard;
The once Great Britain, she stove and fell apart,
**! **! the bankers roared.
Years later, on a bleak winters' day,
EU's UK-citizens, always welcomed, stood aghast,
To see the form of old Great Britain fair,
Battered down by self-inflicted Tory blasts.
Destroyed NHS and infrastructure wrecked the health
of its citizens, tears filled their eyes,
Rivers their homes, with flood prevention ignored,
Countryside and cities drastically demised.
Such became the wreck named Great Britain,
Doomed by alt-right and the superrich!
Reason save us all from a death ordained
On the reef of Farage's glitch!
Adaptation of "The wreck of the Hesperus", Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's poem, as political protest poem given the figurative suitably of Longfellow's original poem. A captain or leader is ignoring the expert advice of a sailor in his crew or experts and analyses well known to society, leading to disastrous effects, the wrecking of the Hesperus and death of his crew and daughter or, otherwise, the wrecking of a country and the suffering of its people. "The wreck of the Deutschland" by Hopkins is also a protest poem of a kind.
I usually don't adapt poems but here it felt appropriate: https://bardvantwenthe.wordpress.com
