The neighbourhood is burning,
but not with fire. No, it is
the slow smouldering of despair:
despair which may erupt suddenly
into swift, shocking violence;
the mayhem of street-riots,
burned-out cars and broken skulls.
This is inner-city Britain,
any city, anytime. A repository
of lost lives, alcoholism and abuse -
mental, physical, sexual.
A landscape of faded brickwork
and crumbling stone, discarded
needles and litter-strewn gardens.
Day in, day out, the elderly
live in fear, women are considered
fair game and children are old
before puberty. Hooded youths
huddle on street corners, empty-eyed
and clueless. A pall of defeat
clings to them like sickness.
O land of hope and glory,
where has Blake's vision gone -
the New Jerusalem which was
to have been built "in England's
green and pleasant land?"
The Divine City has been replaced
by Sodom and Gomorrah.
Please tell me what you think
Comments
1 - 9 of 9
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What a beautiful powerful poem! "the slow smouldering of despair". I love the alliteration in "burned out cars and broken skulls". I should start at the beginning: how strong a first line: you don't mince words: you plow right into things! "The neighborhood is burning". I love the effect of "swift, shocking". I like "Any city, anytime". The alliteration in the line " lost lives, alcoholism and abuse" beautifully strengthens meaning so carefully as to be without notice, only to the trained eye do we see how you've made even stronger your point.
The whole description of the poverty leads me to ask one question: my grandparents were immigrants. When and how did the face of poverty become so much more hopeless, decadent and bleak?
Your last stanza is powerful again: indeed the whole poem maintains its power throughout, with the clear depiction of the inner city, the hopelessness, the terror and the despair. Every line is strengthened with powerful allusions in a wonderfully rich and effective manner!
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My man -- good stuff here. Yeah, I think in almost every culture, in every great city, in every time, there has been grinding poverty, addiction, degradation, depredation and despair. Surely Blake could see it in his London -- and certainly in revoltionary
France. Like any Platonic ideal, the New Jerusalem, like the Kingdom of God, dwells with the better angels of our collective and individual nature. Certainly I see the same depravities in the streets of America's great cities. Rome cannot have had much less.
Mac
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What comes to mind are scenes from the film with Denzel Washington (I can't think of the name now but it was his first). He was an ex soldier in England. Funny, I call today's New York the modern version of Sodom and Gomorrah!
Well done, bro. LOVED IT!
Dez
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This could be ... any time any place in today's society. A very strong, but realistic write ... sadly a reflection of our culture (sick and jaded), but not just restricted to inner-cities, it has reached the urban sprawl as well.
All the best
Sue
x
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I'm giving you two clappies this time, Bill. It's forthright - and true, of course - but I think it errs a wee bit on the prosaic. Nevertheless, it's a "Bill Special"
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I wish it were not so. But there is much truth in your words. Chlidren is a typo in stanza three.
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How depressingly true
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You could just as well be describing any city in the US. The disease has no boundaries. It has filled the earth.
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