Michael D Higgins giving his acceptance speech following the Presidential elections
Kevin writes:
A new poem partly inspired/provoked by Michael D. Higgins’ victory speech in which he spent a lot of time talking about how we talk, but more generally also by those who appear to think that words are more politically important than actions….
Fixing The National Discourse
for an Doctúir Mary McAuliffe
When each adjective, noun, verb,
and swear word
has been put through the purifying machine
we’re perfecting,
those found wanting
abolished by our all conquering delete button;
to safeguard our newfound purity
it will be compulsory for
urban district councils, kindergartens, universities
and non-gubernatorial organisations in receipt
of morbidly obese
public largesse to employ
a pair of performing jaws
from the better bit of town
as Language Ombudsperson
and General Controller of Talk,
to inform you when you’re saying it wrong
and send the offending ex-words
down the U-bend
where they belong.
It will be an offence,
prosecutable under law,
to us the ‘k’ word, the ‘d’ word,
or the ‘r’ word,
even in the privacy of one’s own
mind, except for purposes of historical
study of the political and linguistic
degeneracy of the recent past.
Civil servants will be made read
enough Foucault so they never
inadvertently commit a hate crime
while typing the now traditional
letter of refusal in response to
applications for housing, health care,
welfare…
Furthermore, mention of Led Zeppelin
will heretofore be prefaced
with the health-warning:
quartet of toxic masculinity,
and use of the phrase beautiful blue eyes
accepted as proof of
closet membership of the Ku Klux Klan
by our new non-jury online courts.
As well as having
no effect whatsoever on actual
living, breathing inequality and hatred
for which it’ll be business as usual;
these measures will help us attract
increased foreign direct investment into
our seething little country.
In five years,
ninety percent of you will be working
twelve jobs and paying twice
your monthly income to rent a shed
with a tin roof from the love-child
of Google and the ThyssenKrupp corporation
and be so grateful
you won’t dare spit a nasty word
against anyone.
