… the thistle jags our hearts,
take these roses
from our bloodied hands.
- Carol Ann Duffy, ‘September 2014’
The analogy fails.
There are no flowers
in Whitehall. All that grows in the hothouse of Parliament
is rhetoric test-tubed under licence to Montsanto,
tendrils of falsehood pushed up from a coalition
of mulch and manure – verdant on the surface,
hard iron beneath.
There are no flowers
in Fleet Street. Thrown bouquets are the business
of bride and bridesmaid; the media’s after
something harder and faster – the meaningless congress
of friends with benefits: friends, in this case,
in Number Ten.
There are no flowers
in George Square, only voices united in Flower of Scotland
up against skinheads and Rule Britannia, Nazi salutes
and the Saltire burned, the knife and the boot
and mounted police. Hands are bloodied, but flowers
aren’t offered.
A crown of thorns
is biked up by courier, postmarked London,
