A Sense of England

I’m unsure I can feel you, England
So many winds have blown
And waters brought us ashore
Do we find ourselves
Still, in Ælfred’s skirts?

What is your scent? Your signal?
A dysentery rotting
Army in Azincourt,
A weak autumnal leaf
Certain to die?

But we are a miracle nation
With two fingers thrust to the sky
And knees bent, battle breath
Exhaling ‘We few, we happy few,
We band of brothers’

What is your sound? Your voice?
It is not the matchless
Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau
Or the fearsome Tartan drone
Of kilts and pipes

No, it is simply the crack
Of a hard-red-ball on willow
Of stumps and white boundaries
The sigh of a pig’s bladder
And the boot of a mob

Foreigner. What do you see?
Is it not a small place
An island
Armed to the teeth
With Trident and tea and scones at four?

It is an uncertain people
Tentatively sharing their King
With the neighbours
Who may soon be blown
And washed away

And yet, there is that
Unmistakable taste of history
The suppurating wounds
Of wars to make peace
And foreign fayre on the menu

Beef Wellington, Sir?
Served with irony:
Pâté de foie gras
As English as Spotted Dick
À l’Alexis Benoît Sayer

Winds will blow
And waters threaten
The house Ælfred
But her rivers may yet
Run deeper than blood