$FF: A Node To Autumn

This verse in solemn memory of John Keats
In case he turns beneath the island streets.

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Today we write about this island land.
We write and write until we understand
About white men and whiter who have planned
Our island destiny carved out from sand,
Our chaos mastered by a single brand
Controlled by some clever doctrinal gland.
Now we have found the many rhymes with 'and'
Let us restart and do the work at hand.

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We live within the tropic zone of heat
Where seasons blend into a single haze
Neither too cold nor comfortably neat;
Seasonless we, unseasoned all our days.

Sometimes it rains; this too we must endure,
Our iron rusts beneath the wet abuse.
Such times it spawns within the deep verdure
The fragrant stench of enervate refuse.

Most times it chunders on in blissful damp
Neither like hell nor purgatorial friend;
Life here does not impose too great a cramp
Upon the lifestyles which we do subtend.

We have descent from proud Oriental line,
Our fathers wrought from coolie status this:
A pleasure-dome of rigorous design
Which shows what was, and can be, also is.

And ending here we must defy the odds
To mention not as most parochials would
Some tribute mighty to the leeward gods
Who from our fathers took what praise they could.