Like Greta
Find utter calm before fear
and be too brutally honest
with your known-self – first
Listen to bigoted bar-props
seething with Sussex-hate
about France – French – prices
Only lie to save another’s life
and carry all truth before you –
as a banner of fixed colours
Old men sip their local beer –
despising lives of foreigners –
none will summon them here
Innocence breeds wisdom
whilst that contrary state
feeds on greater ignorance
And then detailed discussions
of travelling – retired – through Europe
They always hate their neighbour
If Greta Thunberg stepped off her bus
and walked through this village of idiots
she would still carry her banner high
These old men of East Sussex mutter –
behind beer head white moustaches –
about another bloody foreigner here