Richard Pierce

Richard Pierce – author, poet, painter

Education, Life, Politics

The Cradle of Democracy

A hundred thousand
Students deprived of education
Turn against the screen showing nothing
But a history deprived of context,
A history designed to make them
Only the mouthpieces of capitalism
And slavery, and rip the papers
That would bind them into shreds.

This was never meant to be poetry.

Millions of young people, denied
Learning, crowd the dark spaces
Of the internet to find the meaning
Of oppression and the destruction of
Independent thought, and ask
The questions the government thought
Should never be asked, and
Want the answers despots fear.

This was never meant to become real.

In a tiny country at the edge of Europe,
Unelected advisers make curricula
In their own image, and expect
The masses to follow them. Some do,
Their education stolen from them years
Ago, by the first woman to hold
What was the highest office, and
Now the lowest of the low.

This was never meant to be a song without a chorus.

As its imagined influence dwindles,
This united thingdom splits and shatters
Into the pieces that fought each other
Centuries ago, and the English flee,
As they always did, into their bunkers
Of ignorance and exceptionalism, until
The earth covers them, and shields them
From the sounds of the truth.

This was never meant to be a requiem.

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1 Comment

  1. Minutes to Midnight

    4th October 2020 at 08:07

    Heartbreaking and infuriating.

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