The Gauleiter and His Pig
With the European Elections tomorrow and our politics so sullied and divisive I am sharing this poem from Poems from the Swamp, my 2018 collection.
The Gauleiter and his Pig
The Gauleiter and his pig reside here
in the swamp, a septic, infected sty,
poisoned with wormwood for false prophecy.
Their respectability has that stink
of swill that clings like thin grease, that chokes throats,
an insinuation of rancid filth.
They can wash their hands, insipid Pilates,
and never know what it is to be clean.
The people have spoken, so it is claimed
across this newly grim, unpleasant land
where mandrakes strangle healthy plants,
fervoured tendrils spread amidst the sane,
sanguine folk of once fair-minded islands
made pestilential and sabre-rattling
when pigs and Gauleiters take command.
This pig and Gauleiter feed on censure,
patrol the streets, sniff out the shunned,
hunt the dreamers, the effete, the forceless,
poison the water, spread lies, deception
that find keen reception in willing ears.
These guardians of now lost Albion
with pig battalions in eager service
goose step, relentless over small town swamps,
spread
venom and violence with every tramp.
People need their pigs in lipstick, patsies,
apologists, pimps and panders.
These quiet and not so quiet fascists
impose spurious jurisdiction,
shift civilisation’s paradigm
spawn bleak new dawns of moral disaster,
bring terror, trauma and catastrophe.
This Gauleiter and his wallowing pig
inhabit the swamp imperiously,
belching obscene absurdity.
The cowed folk quake and scuttle with truffles
to sate and satisfy lusty tumescence,
with Destroying Angel, Fly Agaric,
to avoid the cosh, the Taser, the mace.
But nothing placates appetites like these
where only the hunger, the greed is fed.
The sty turns seamier, with deepening stench,
while mists from the quagmire writhe and hiss,
meander in serpentine gyres and twists,
layering the space where once light fell
with impenetrable shadows from boundless Hell.
Once before, in still living memory
the fair-minded folk of a place like this
thrilled in denouncing friends and neighbours,
those whose faces no longer fit.
Trucks rattled the bones of human cargo
along tracks destined for nightmarish swamps.
Pigs and Gauleiters wallowed in loss,
caroused at perdition and extermination,
a Saturnalia of uncountable cost.
This Gauleiter, pig, and the onlookers
are droghers who’ll carry the weight of the swamp,
a shipment of shame beyond all atoning
long after this tale and its tellers are gone.
May
8
By Josie Moon
Pisagua
Category: Social Comment 2 Comments
It is 40 years since Thatcher became PM in Britain. Her election ushered in change that damaged the fabric of society, destroyed communities and began the steady dismantling of the country’s infrastructure. I have a strong and abiding loathing of her and all she stood for.
It is arguably not widely known that Thatcher regarded Pinochet of Chile as a good friend and ally. I am currently re-reading Andy Becket’s excellent book Pinochet in Piccadilly which details the strange, fascinating and disturbing story of Thatcher and Pinochet.
When I first read the book I wrote the poem below. The poem returned to me as I read comments fawning over Thatcher and as I picked up the book again.
Pisagua
1973
The trucks began to arrive
and cries rang from those
who dragged themselves
naked
up the glass-strewn nitrate slopes.
No visitors.
No Red Cross.
Executions took place
beside the cemetery.
Now an unscarred monument
in black and blue and red
guards the place of the dead.
Vultures still circle overhead.
There is a memorial to the dead in Pisagua, pictured above; a solemn and frightening piece of wall art that tells the story of those taken, tortured, murdered and left in a mass grave under Pinochet’s orders.