Ah, Palmyra

We care more for ancient ruins
And destruction wrought on tombs
By whatever means they may
Than for lives that end today

While the blood and flesh and bone
Leaving everything they own
To escape the latest purge
Travel desert, sea and gorge

Those who voyage only land
On their uppers, close at hand
To the help they sorely need
Yet the politicians plead

Not to have to break their word
To the xenophobic horde
Those whose votes they barely won
From the hardened right, anon

Thus with bottle-necks and fence
We corral and harry hence
Workers that we sure could use
Grateful, welcome, unabused

Skilled and keen to integrate
To prop up our ageing State
In permissive company
Knowing just who let them be

As the fight takes to the skies
And the waves fill up with lies
We would throw away resource
Inconvenient and coarse

With no tally of the cost
Nor of what support is lost
Though our leaders might feel tall
While our borders stand, we fall

To those society forgot, an apology

To those without an education, those who yet remain our hope for a future we daily pray will never come, please know we are truly sorry – sorry that your future will be our present and that you, in your untrained ignorance, may not know enough to help us when it comes our turn, or that you, remembering past slights, may snub our pleas for aid in our dotage.

To those without a job, those who yet remain our hope for the future of the welfare state, please know that we are truly sorry – sorry that we shall never enjoy the fruits of your labours and that you will never know the peace of retirement, of rest after a good day’s work.

To those without their health, those who would be well, but for the want of a penny to pay the person to sweep the floor of the operating theatre, a penny that was pinched for a politician’s pocket-lining, please know that we are truly sorry – sorry that you will not live to see tomorrow and pay the new taxes that it brings to fund the paper improvements we will make to a service no one may use for it’s rightful purpose, but those who pay for the privilege of avoiding the laws and lists of the land.

To those without a pension, those who fought for their future, our present, who elected us and believed in our pompous, empty promises, please know we are truly sorry – sorry that those days will never come again, that more of you did not lay down your lives in glorious sacrifice for us to cry crocodile tears of hypocrisy and lay cheap paper flowers upon a slab of rock to honour the memory of the young, the foolish.

To all those society forgot, please know we are truly sorry.  Now please go about your business and stop bothering us.  After all, you have no one to blame, but yourselves.