Queues

Men queued, shivering in fear and terrorFor the ships and little boats to take themAway from the skies full of

Screaming stukas warning, not of rain,But death to wash away their lives.There was no Moses to petition God –

Begging him to part the indifferent sea.So they waited as they lived,Because they had to –

Freedom, in those Dunkirk minutesSwollen with time must haveBeen a longing only a desperate slave

Would know fleeing the deep South.And picture the bedraggled menStanding as the rain fell on ragged

Queues, waiting for dollars orA few pence in the threadbare thirties –Bellies rumbling like fascist drums;

Men waiting without hope for jobs,Women in line at the butchersFor a few scraps of meat

Trained, like dogs in patience,To beg for the right to beIn a world beyond their control.

And now . . . and now . . . see howThe queues snake around buildingsStuffed with rags and trinkets

Denied them in the Lockdown –An Interdict for the unfaithful, or aSecular pilgrimage to a kind of truth?

Would peasants in King John’s England,I wonder, stand in line to praise himWhen the bells, once again, began to toll?

For God knows, the sound would notFill their bellies, clothe their kids,Or make them lords of their land.

But hard not to muse that freedomBeckons for the folk in theQueues for Big Macs and Primark’s best –

Could this be England’s new and finest hour?