England

ENGLAND England is a changing country Not the place I left thirty five years ago. Oh yes, they still have Ann Hathaway’s Cottage, And Buckingham Palace, and even fish-and-chips. But it’s all dressed up in theme-park clothes, And staffed by people speaking only Serbian, Or Bengali, who don’t know what or where Big Ben is. And don’t care what Big Ben is. Or where. The language is almost pure American as spoken By Schwartzenegger or Ice Cube. The English see themselves as performing on An imagined tv show for the benefit of paying tourists. When I lived there English people knew what they stood for, And today they will stand for anything. You could be standing In Melbourne, or Akron, or London The music, food, manners, hopes, beliefs are all the same.