Photo credit: Mia Elliott Smith / Shutterstock.com*.

Three-holed pipe

On the pro-Europe March for Change last month Geoffrey Taylor felt inspired to write the following memoir in verse.

A latter day minstrel strums
Out those chords with accompanying speech,
Over a crowd outside the Commons.
Who’ve made the connecting street,
A full hour from where we meet.
His words a touch indelicate,
Like as an athlete after their heat.
It is the anthem those fingers awake,
Three bent with the index straight.

Two bars in with a downward stroke.
Ushering forth, the marchers giving way,
Is a figure who would these provoke.
Moulded in papier mache,
Head and shoulders above the sway,
A likeness of a popular agitator.
the strings of marionette he plays:
Where the appeal has been the greater;
Who seems peerless as a prater.

A legend in Latin moderates
The offence in a repeated slogan,
Its wording clearly states
In embroidery that’s finely woven;
A pair from Hastings hold it open.
So monotonous grow the chants
That rarely is the spell broken.
This presents a happy circumstance,
As a spirit within our body supplants.

In waiting in the wings along the route
is a musician with reeded woodwind,
And a drum and a pipe salute:
‘When the saints,’ in marching time.
Six holes and another behind,
From the ranges of Catalan.
A boxwood grain light and fine.
It will inform our ear for a span,
With the universal language of man

In the cause of jeux sans frontière
Subject to each bedside prayer;
Each inherent psyche should fire.
An infant could outline it there
Upon a chart of firth and estuaire;
Of landmass and lapping water.
Behold, a new chief is running the affair!
Has all the graces of a king’s daughter,
First impression – what a corker!

Breaking away shall sit too heavy
Upon the conscience. There could
Not be enough grounds to levy.
Dissembling those sins a greater would
Have to replace where the former stood.
“No goodbyes based upon lies!” ran one,
I saw this line from across the road
By the War Cabinet location.
Many another too personalised in tone.

*Photo kindly supplied by Best for Britain, who point out they were responsible for the puppet stunt depicted.

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