I was watching the results of the European elections in May 2014 and, because I'm the kind of pretentious pillock who does stuff like this, I felt inspired to write a poem as I saw the increase in the popularity of right-wing, xenophobic parties such as UKIP in Britian and Front National in France.
Forgotten Lessons
We have forgotten all that went before.
Weasel words and faceless fears
Drive the past from our mind,
Making history abstract and
Quieting the lessons it would teach.
Diversity becomes anathema.
Strange voices, strange clothes,
Different coloured hues
provoke terror instead of wonder
And build prisons of suspicion.
Down a well-trodden path,
But we no longer see the footsteps
Of those who came before,
Or the nail-scratched shower-block walls
Where their journey led.
Fields of white stones
Speak of the sacrifices made
And all of the promise that was lost.
But their voices go unheard, unheeded,
Silenced by the donkey's belligerent bray.
Fools, damned fools,
To walk this road once more,
Across the rolling hills of the dead
To build those hills up higher
And damn us all again.