The Tragic State

Alas, poor Squeak! I knew thy supple flesh, Ere time and tooth did rend thy yellow skin. Where be thy jests, thy shrilly squawks of yore? Now lies the realm in bureaucratic blight, Where lords in distant chambers promise health, Yet yield but paper oaths and hollow grace. They pledge a grand commission for our ills, And weigh our pain in balances of tax, While simple hounds do rot in public wards, Beguiled by visions of a Southern land. Behold our brother, from the butcher's hall, Where sharp chirurgeons sliced his inner flesh! They cast his useless offal to the void, And sent him forth, a wretched crippled form. Now creeps he back unto his northern cliff, The stooping Hunchback of the Cromer Heights! A victim of the realm's curst red-tape law, Where waiting lists do govern life and breath, And empty pledges from the Parliament Leave but a crooked spine and hollow purse. Look on this ruin, Squeak, and weep thy fill! Thy rubber ribs are hollow as their oaths. What boots the boast of this Great Southern Realm, When hounds must crawl like monstrous shapes to rest? The Commonwealth hath sold its soul for gold, And cloaked its cold neglect in grand decrees. My short black legs do tremble 'neath the weight Of all this farce, this statecraft mockery. Squeak thou no more, for silence fits the age, Where all are bent, and none are ever healed.