They talk of Britishness, a solid, golden thing,

a past of cricket whites and a queen who doesn't blink.

They fly their banner, the cross of every saint

and claim this is the one land without complaint.

 

But no one names the thing. They talk of something pure,

then walk a different street with a different kind of poor.

They are sub-nations, tribes of lifestyle and accent,

that never see the other side except by accident.

 

And a boat comes to the shore, a desperate ship

and they fear the otherness, the difference on the lip.

They yell about invasion, about a world gone wrong

but the dread in their voices is an ancient, British song.

 

The boat is not a threat. It is an echo of the fear

they’ve always had for each other, the ones living near

who are not them. Their tribal mark is more a silent cut,

a cleavage of the soul that can't ever be shut.

 

They have different blood groups, the high and the low.

The doctors, the geneticists, and the charts say so.

A gene pool of working men, a gene pool of the rich.

An unmoving ancient line, a vast primeval ditch.

 

So they cling to a phantom, a country of the mind,

while their own kin are strangers, of the hated kind.

They point to the horizon with a self-righteous dread

but the real war is raging in their own blood, instead.