Owned by wild kings,
Bound dragons at the Welsh border
Pict at by the Scots.
~
Bled by the French and in turn
Taking posts at Agincourt
And peeling the incredible way across the world.
Crushing the heavy people.
Crushing the heavy people.
~
Killing off ancient tribes
Across the Mediterranean,
On the Great and First continent of Man
Of all Man.
~
To suck up peppers and cocoa and palm oil.
Then bodies;
Deep as the Mother.
Deep always as earth.
And reaping then and dropping them across
~
The other side of the deep dark ocean
Dips a blade into the fertile earth
And flicks a bayonet hard left
And right.
Left.
Right.
~
Flings it into the Caribbean
And the North
Gushing cane from the wound
And cools the smoke from a rusty
End
~
And walks back into the east
Into Hanuman and Wukong
And cuts into the Ganges and the Yangtze,
And into the jungles in the Deccan
And over the lush valleys of the Himalayas
Pulling itself.
Back into an ‘at ease’ stance.
~
Heaving bodies from one,
And gold from the other
On the way.
It is drained.
Across the continent
Spilling riches
Across its hard dead earth
Bringing it to life.
~
Spilling them into the A
A generation hauled over
Another saved in Mountains
Swamps
And Jungles
Another stifled into silence by the ocean
~
It judges all leads all and charges all on ships.
That dominated and Navigated the routes.
Wrested by pirates from the Spanish and the French
It courses through the waves in the Philippines
On runs against the Dutch
~
It spread its net across the sea
And casts its trident across the land
It gorges on the goods
Sweeping up the gold and the bodies and the ivory
Cutting its teeth in the dope and the tea
In the coffers and counting rooms.
Pouring cane into cubes
leaves into strainers
Tusks into trinkets and brushes and brooches
And bright ore into bullion.
This Way Madness Lies 