From the inside:
Next year we are to bring the soldiers home
For lack of money, and it is all right
Places they guarded, or kept orderly,
Must guard themselves, and keep themselves orderly.
We want the money for ourselves at home
Instead of working. And this is all right.It’s hard to say who wanted it to happen.
But now it’s been decided nobody minds.
The places are a long way off, not here.
Which is all right, and from what we hear
The soldiers there only made trouble happen
Next year we shall be easier in our minds.Next year we shall be living in a country
That brought its soldiers home for lack of money.
The statues will be standing in the same
Tree-muffled squares, and look nearly the same.
Our children will not know it’s a different country.
All we can hope to leave them now is money.–Philip Larkin
“Homage to a Government”
England, 1969
(H/T to occasional reader Edward)
Ow! It’s too late at night for Larkin, here.
I think of what he had to say about my parents.
OwwowowPhilipLarkin!
Sorry, cuts too close to the bone for me.
This made me really sad.