In the Name of Greatness – Nikki Williams
First watch the video to get the feeling of it. Only a general idea is necessary.
- Which of the following things are criticized in the poem?
Always in the name of greatness
A greatness that is insatiable
back down the Thames
To the heart of darkness
by the starkness
Of these rainy British days
By the steel and the .
Of Canary Wharf
The capital of capital
Where Thatcher began it all
Where trickle down turned into look around
And see instead the gated
The tales of two cities
Where we forged broken ties
Out of
So that debt becomes the word that defines our nation
We´ve all taken part in the mass creation
Of a desperate hungry credit generation
Where we borrow from the funds of our children´s
But the debt lies deeper
A debt that seeps out of something
Called national
We turn our minds back on now
And look to 1945
To our finest hour
To that sweet
glassiness, pride, nostalgia, overwhelmed, retreating, communities, speculation, education
Where we knew how important it was
To have something to be proud of
And so you swallowed the double think
And remain suspended between past and present
And time unended
But a prophecy is a prophecy
And the prophecy by its nature is fulfilled
And we can avoid another
If what we are trying to build
Are real ties between each other
And with the present
Rather than looking back in time
And to other classes with
Is this the land of heritage and history?
Because it seems to me that this legacy
Is lost in a matrix
Of CCTV
Because those rings
Are circling more than a stadium
They circle our skin
And we stand in the of them
Still told to keep calm and carry on
As if someone´s invading them
But I was told the came down
The year I was born
So why am I kept back
By wire stretching 12 feet tall?
A pattern stretches out
In zones below
resentment, shade, patchwork, walls, Olympic, riot
An assault course of grey
Punctured with danger of
By electric shock yellow
And I recognize that effect
Don´t you?
Lets just call it The Enclosure Act Mark 2
Where the common land is privatized
And the territories are marked under threatening skies
The fences glimmer
In the shadow of high rise
And the shines back in our eyes
As we retreat inside ourselves
As we learn to despise the
Who press in on every side
Can´t you see? We are atomized
And all roads lead eventually, not to Rome,
But inevitably to Westfield Stratford Retail city
This globe of
Oh what a thing of beauty
To bypass completely the community
local, reflection, commerce, death, strangers
You don´t see the crumbling precinct
You can turn your eyes from
Because here old is old news
And we specialize in novelty
And I´ve been there
It´s so bright
It hurts me
In its violent attempts to pull me into .
I can see it pulsing from the people next to me
Feel it spread
Trying to alter my
But if you look at ecstasy etimologically
Its about being beside yourself
Outside yourself
To be for a moment someone other than yourself
And isn´t that what´s needed to create a legacy?
To feel a sense of
To sympathise and empathise
And criticize and recognize a place
Where we want to spend our lives
responsibility, poverty, identity,ecstasy
No comments:
Post a Comment