Implacable

 

Implacable

 

Here’s your flotilla – a floating thing

of carousing crews, champagne corks

and popping off a quick selfie from the bridge.

Stand fronting the mirror, all a-quiver

and service the art of self-service -

post pictures, memes,

high jinx on the high seas.

You crawl above the Mediterranean basin

with all the speed of sea-snails set racing

against nudibranch,

urchins and worms,

tossing off plastic

as you drift idle amongst the bottles.

In your wake, come admiring crowds

cherishing anemone fronds in reflected ponds

with nothing much to say at all.

Perhaps they recall disrupted seminars, lecture halls,

turning up hungover, arriving late,

or just turning over in bed

to rest a self-weary head.

Now, here come the gunboats, soldiers swarm

implacable and hole, and sink

those above their paygrade and rank,

completely out-thought, out-flanked

and you claim the whole thing stank.

Most of you disgorged in Greece

to fill up on moussaka, gobble baklava,

chug down ouzo, toast yourselves at the very least -

and those they dragged off

might flit across a butterfly mind

before alighting on the nearest cabbage,

Now, your people can’t be sure

who the shouting’s really for,

why those most in need still go without -

and they may well envy the gibbering throng

with a green gaunt eye

while licking ravenous lips and dripping tongues.