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Mayday Mourning

 

 

 

Mourn for the May whose ribboned fripperies once, fluttering,

Fostered cheerful colour on each vernal village green.

Though brazen buddleias dash some dour dolour from the guttering,

They still raise sad rejoinders to our ugly, urban scene.

 

Then shone the season of gay garland and rich revelry;

Then was the maypole’s hour to overlook glad scenes.

Economy’s gloom galls, with lustful lucre’s practised devilry

To festoon struggling masses with soulless greys, not greens.

 

Weep for the wasting of May’s mirthful frolics and festivities;

Lament the loss of flowery freshness, which once accompanied morn,

For now, in crowded cities, faithless fashions rise, proclivities

Which draw us down, relentlessly, to uninspiring dawn.

 

Gone is the playfulness of jesting jollity and merriment;

Gone is the gaiety and lost the laughing Morris dance.

Born of dire necessity’s remorseless loss of innocence,

Mundane matters magnify and tender joy no chance.

 

Cry for the countryside, where dancing feet tripped, twinkling,

Intertwining in complexity under unpolluted skies,

Whilst, in our towns, inhabitants sore shudder with the inkling

That drudgery may dominate as our determination dies.

 

Lost is the May Queen’s brightness, complementing greenery;

Lost is the cheerfulness, which graced once-tranquil realms,

Replaced by noxious, headlong rush to vandalise our scenery

With tower-block monstrosities whose dullness overwhelms.

 

Hark to the echoing of Arcadian, green tranquillity.

Recall the charm of simpler, homely heydays from the past.

Let not fatiguing greyness rise to obliterate our ability

To let atavistic, re-born hope spring fresh Maydays that last.

may day

◄ Inspiration from Bronte Country

Bowers Row Second-hand Memories ►

Comments

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Yvonne Brunton

Tue 1st May 2012 23:09

I like the lament for May though, unlike Cate, I feel there is a tad too much alliteration which makes the poem feel contrived in places,( this is in the 1st 3 verses)

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Cate Greenlees

Tue 1st May 2012 17:38

I like the way you have used alliteration throughout this, and an almost Shakespearean use of language to symbolise a past age and what we have lost in our "modern" times.
Cate xx

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M.C. Newberry

Tue 1st May 2012 16:15

A timely reminder to rejoice in the vital importance of the countryside - and the country that bred us - and to resist the philistine hunger to profit from its desecration: all too frequent under the guise
of "progress" and "need".

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