The Flag
April 23rd, St. George’s Day
How proudly they’ve hoisted it
above the greening valley!
From the glossy pole it flutters
limply, a butcher’s bandage
shorn from the cloth of Albion.
This to fete the slain Dragon?
I would rather keen its death,
mourn the sainted mission
that yields the calamity
of Earth’s energies oppressed,
ancient vision twisted
into man versus beast.
Ah, and what an abject maypole!
No kin or kith to interplay
their ribbons – instead, a trembling
head, its cross a fragment of the web
which our early ancestors
tracked across these isles.
And that cross is their blood in ours –
it’s life resurrected at this fecund time,
when blood ripples
on England’s winding sheet.
—
Helen Moore – ecopoet, Forest Schools practitioner, community artist/activist www.natures-words.co.uk
http://www.shearsman.com/pages/books/catalog/2012/moore.html
Pic: Claire Palmer