Victory
The dead file by in an endless line
to salute both victory & decline
to shake the hand of their Champion
the Lord of Laughter & Contagion
a storyteller with an engaging tone
who tells of how this country stood alone
even though it’s never clear
exactly which country the dead must cheer
but cheer they must for they are sacred
easily acquired & rendered naked
they pile up like debris after a parade
the Laughing One is nervous by what he has made
he is blown backwards rejoicing at the mystery
consumed by fear the dead & history
©George Gunn 2020
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Poetry helped expose the tragedy of the immense loss of life in The Great War and the utter incompetence of those who conducted it ; perhaps it will help some to see through the lies and deceptions which are being used to glaze over the tragedy that is Covid-19 , when we are , again , ”Lions lead by donkeys ! ”
Lions led by donkeys pretending to be bulldogs.
The Imperial War Museum lists an oil painting entitled The Unending Cult of Human Sacrifice (1934) by C R W Nevinson:
https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/20246
Churchill’s modern successors may be members of a neoliberal death cult currently demanding human sacrifices at the altar of the Economy, which is quintessentially Anglo-British hypocrisy considering the last refuge of British Imperialists is the tendentious claim that their Empire at least managed to end human sacrifice in some benighted corner of the globe (forgetting the Bloody Code that executed thieves, chattel slavery, naval impressment and all the rest of the props of propertarianism writ into law and stamped on the legal systems of colonies past and present).