Day 15...2

 A bit of an obvious target, but ..


Mr Kipling's cakes


Not the younger jingoist,

The rhyming empire apologist,

The fabled cake maker, the imperial court jester,

The anthropomorphist.

English 'traditions', setting the teeth on edge,  

like the unnecessarily thick icing 

on fondant fancies 

like assumptions of superiority


This Kipling is the one

receiving the letter, that letter-

about the end of John,

last seen wandering the mud, halfblind.

Poor John, who shouldn't have been fighting

of course-  nineteen fifteen, eighteen -

any more than anybody's sons

who died - the fathers lied. 


This poem ends where land does-

the big chalk wedge of England 

where Kent is sliced by sea and Kipling stands 

in the wind, looking towards Europe, but not seeing. 

He wears a motoring helmet and kid gloves.

Soon, in a small inn in the village (fictional)

it will be time for sandwiches, for stirring rhyme

for cakes, for tea. All the old campaigns.

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