Passing the poisoned cup
One prime minister resigned,
Another crowned by tearing up
The security of Northern Ireland,
When Tory seats were not enough
To form a near-valid government,
The purulent chalice passes
Hand to hand, mouth to mouth,
As we hear gunfire in Alsace;
Blood on the streets of Strasburg
Where sits the EU parliament,
December, in Westminster Palace
The cabinet creates an adjournment
As their Brexit deal is met with malice,
Thus, the cup holder made the judgment
To postpone the parliamentary ballot
Until all debate becomes redundant,
In the hope MPs do what they are told
When later, a decision is even more urgent,
As if it was this or watch the world implode,
They say this really is the best Brexit,
Brim full of bitterness that corrodes
It’s Brexit itself a ‘no’ vote may prevent,
The grim fairy-tale half the UK was sold
Cannot manifest; it has no substance,
You can’t cross a rainbow for a pot of gold,
So, the PM makes deferments to quell insurgence
And, far more worryingly, to defeat debate,
Employing the terror and the turbulence
So, she can later say it is too late
To heed the union’s fate
Or the Good Friday Peace Agreement,
Using the fear of further delays
To rally support for this form
Of European abandonment,
That the continent views as
Foolish arrogance and scorn;
A circus of self-indulgence
As hardliner Brexiteers suffer from
Cognitive dissonance
At the death of their candyfloss unicorn,
Millions watch as Andy Serkis
Does his impression of Gollum
As May guarding her “precious”;
A dark pact become obsession
As ordinary people pay the cost,
She is not a lone politician –
But she is the cabinet’s boss,
This is perilous,
We would have been better off
If we had never taken this road,
Flattening the atlas,
Turning princes into desiccated toads,
Pulling down the Corona Borealis
To claim the constellations as our own,
Here in London,
A noose is carried at the crossroads,
What has our referendum imparted?
Parliament was not yet open
Before negotiations started,
Then, in the Commons, the withholding
Of vital legal documents;
Then, despite our constitution’s lack of coding,
The government found in contempt
Of its house in the attempt
To push through the deal
The vast majority resent,
Triggering calls
For a vote of no confidence
Which saves the premier from herself,
Giving a mass to her insistence,
While shedding doubt upon the doubts
About her proposed agreement,
They do not vote her out,
If they had, what then?
The limits of the entire cabinet
Fall on the shoulders of one woman
Who took up the festering goblet,
If the task passed to the fluff-headed man
To carry out his harsher-edged Brexit plan,
What then?
The Tory’s, faced with that deterrent,
Given assurance of May’s pre-term abdication,
Left her in power, merely weakened,
In committee room fourteen
They cheered the outcome,
But the PMs support remains slim,
This is not on the head of one human
But there will be an awesome reckoning
For all when all the posturing is done,
Will there be another election?
Or a second referendum
To hear the people speaking?
For Remainers, these were among
The many reasons for not leaving,
Forewarned and foreseen outcomes,
Beyond all the proposed tweaking
In every EU meeting,
For we are no longer the pater of imperialism
And this won’t alter by self-deceiving,
We cannot be lead by wistfulness, surrealism,
Or chest-thumping bleating,
This failure was set by the result of the referendum,
The dice thrown in June 2016,
The choice made was ever a loaded gun,
One thing is clear,
The 48% are no longer sovereign,
We are lost in this decision;
The representatives I see
No longer represent me,
As a lifelong British citizen
I grieve for my ailing country,
This broken union for our children,
The open gates of poverty
Bigotry and community division,
Bringing betrayal of heritage, ancestry
And lives yet to come,
If the Brexit of a small section
Of the half that won a victory
By two percent,
Continues, facilitated by
An administration with a weak mandate
And a disordered opposition,
Then any reclaimed sovereignty is fake;
A toxic proposition
Whose cuts will cut more deeply,
Future generations
Will blame all British, communally,
And we won’t be able to save them
From the poisoned cup we gave them.
Antonia Sara Zenkevitch
The 48% 