Lost Poem / Found

It’s clearly a retake on Ozymandias

Lost Poem...
I found a file of an old anthology I’d contributed to years ago, hidden in a forgotten documents folder — and in it was a poem by yours truly that I have no memory of writing. It’s clearly a retake on Ozymandias, and it is at least twenty years old, but the words still feel apt for these times.

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To The Leader of The Free World

Your empire will go the way of all empires.
Your outlets will become wild gardens.
Your motorways, migration paths for buffalo.
Maize will be sown in the dust you have left.

In New York harbour, two broken metal legs, 
on the pedestal, these words, Give me your tired, 
your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free. 
We will come to this new land, 
never knowing your philosophy, that 
an empire begins with an open hand.

© John Siddique
From 'Babylon Burning'
Poems in aid of the Red Cross

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The last few years of course have also shown us that the author of the words ‘Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,’ only meant a certain kind of people. The language of freedom, compassion, democracy and civilisation can become propaganda - and maybe it always was. We are played and caught by our listening for what seems to remain human inside language itself. We think and feel we are included because we expect human needs to be recognised and reciprocated universally.

…and as Jonny Rotten of The Sex Pistols famously said ‘never trust a hippy’ I put it to you to never trust a president or a poet. Without some real contact with the soul, all words eventually collapse under the weight of their own emptiness.

Love
John