1381 - A Year of the Pig

Brutally, through London's streets

    We rebels slink, our fingers high

With foreign blood, our shirts awry,

    Stinking, stained with night's defeat.

        Come drink this toast in regal wine,

        And slit the guts of London's swine.

The whore of Lombardy lies dying

        Of avarice, body strewn with broken flowers,

Her dark blood flooding the rutted lanes.

                                                                   Sighing

    Trumpets of dawn arousing, shaking

The silent mists from London's streets

    Of earth bedecked with satin sheets.

        We wear unblemished stocks of fine

        Silk, torn from the necks of London's swine.

Our action seeks no accolades,

    No gambit for benighted knights;

No poor-box aid for drunken rites.

    We are the new rich! Doomed shades

Of this unrelenting night.

        Comes mourning's hollow scream — a whine

        From the throats of London's swine.

The Tyrant is dead, grown cold in the sun.

    His blood has dried, our anger spent.

W e are the masters — free men of Kent —

    Becoming tyrants in our turn.

        And in a future place and time

        Who' ll mourn the death of country swine?

- Peter J. F. Newton