From high upon an armoured hill
I gazed upon a busy field
Where rank and title mattered nil
In widespread use, the common weal.

At sport or play or solo run
Redoubt where gold held meagre weight
And stories true and not were spun
A passing stay from weary fate.

As much a thought as was a place
Those piggish men could not intrude
And where that cold, demanding face
Could be ignored, though interlude.

Yet gluttony will find a way
To claim its own the common thread
Demand a fee the rest must pay
The public ward but turns its head.

Withal they need the working folk
Their riches hold lives’ labours lost
Who shackled to eternal yolk
Whose silent shadows bear the cost.

Hear the well-heeled clamoured roar
For what one time belonged to all
To sack resource and pillage store
And demonize the social call.

And feint us into want and buy
And foist on us a phony price
And mock us if we go awry
And offer us a slender slice.

And purchased by their loot and tricks
The quisling press does clamour so
For private gain, communal risk.
The lavish few, the teeming woe.

‘Tis not for them the common good
When civic guard’s so easy bought
And hunt down modern Robin Hoods
And wash their hands of what they’ve wrought.

The Common now lies fenced and tilled
The people gone, the fields, the purse
The guzzling gang is hardly filled
The mass dismissed to moan and curse.

And thus it costs us ever more
To eat, to learn, to laugh, to splint
While the bloated, corporate whore
Sits belching gas and needs a mint.

Copyright Paul Heno February 2011