Η τριακόσιες (The three hundred)

Poor Greece look like a spent force

The Independent on Sunday, 3 June 2012

For years they have soft-soaped us

with their frothing currencies;

now they demand of us

the soil in which Leonidas still seethes

over the cull of Spartan fathers,

and the turquoise Aegean waters

into which, long after Xerxes fled,

the blood of Greece still seeps.

We will show their emissaries

all the traditional hospitalities,

the same ones the Persians met

from the vastly outnumbered Greeks:

a watery grave, a suit of clay,

a readiness to find honour in defeat.

(c) 2012 Slush Poet

In the absence of power

Legoland closes due to power failure

Slough Observer, 6 May 2012

The governments of Greece and France have fallen,

their peoples’ power finally failing them,

the aftershocks are felt far away.

In rural Berkshire, loosened foundations

send flurries of PVC masonry tumbling

from scaled-down totems of national grandeur.

A lame Eiffel Tower leans over like Pisa,

the grinning Acropolis requires a dentist.

But the malls of Paris are already braced

for an upsurge in spending, while Athens

squats and strains over Europe’s face.

Who says turkeys don’t vote for thanksgiving?

(c) 2012 Slush Poet