Salutary warnings
Racism alive and well
Five men condemned in Tiger Bay
Five men condemned to hell
And Stephen Lawrence
A TV show
Puts before our eyes
How easily we do it
How easily despise
Strangers on ‘our manor’
What they doing here!
Clear them off and get them out
Don’t let them nowhere near!
And now the migrant crisis
‘Flooding in’ on boats
‘Swarming’ in our country
Are you taking notes?
Here’s our latest tactic
Turn them round at sea
They mustn’t touch our sacred coast
That’s for you and me
Once they are on the water
We should save them from the sea
And working with Euro neighbours
Develop a strategy
We are not an island fortress
God help us if we are
We need to help these people
They have come so very far
Receive them and encamp them
Process them of course
Help them
As they seek to make a home
We are Celts and Anglo-Saxons
Normans Viking too
Jews escaping pogroms
Europeans through and through
We are immigrants from India
Asian Irish too
Come from the Caribbean
The famous Windrush crew
‘White Anglo Saxon Protestant’
Such a narrow field
Tory boys and tea and scones
This view will have to yield
Corruption and complacency
Threaten this fair land
There’s decent people living here
England’s a lovely land
But selfishness and narrow minds
And each one for himself
We’ll end up talking to ourselves
On this continental shelf
Brian Fahy
14 September 2021
Erris Poetry 