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Poorer by the Day
a villanelle
They pay in promises they will betray;
A scam as cold and ancient as the sea.
While those who work grow poorer by the day,
Their masters mint fool’s gold to give away
To marks too selfish, starved or blind to see
They’ve paid with promises they will betray.
Yet those with coin to buy real wealth make hay
As prices burgeon, wages atrophy
And those who work grow poorer by the day.
Meanwhile, their revolution’s all for play,
As trust-fund kids beat up a bourgeoisie
Once paid with promises they now betray,
And their smug priests just smirk at your dismay,
Because it’s good for the economy
When those who work grow poorer by the day.
You have become, in your naiveté,
A serf, but with a fancy new TV,
And pay with promises you must betray
For those who work grow poorer by the day.
.
.
Shaun C. Duncan is a picture framer and fine art printer who lives in Adelaide, South Australia.
Perfect political perspective on our times of disarray
While the elites in power add to our dismay!
Thank you, Roy!
I’m partial to villanelles, and to the other French fixed forms. When they were reintroduced to English in the nineteenth century they provided a welcome escape from the sonnet for poets who wanted a short form that allowed for concision, repetition with variation, and laser-like focus. Don’t get me wrong — sonnets are great, like spare ribs, but you can’t subsist on a diet of them exclusively.
This is a villanelle with political and cultural commentary. It is very specific, direct, and has pressing contemporary relevance. The globe is slowly but surely being swallowed up by an elite of mega-corporations, NGOs, big banks, an overentitled professional class, academic poseurs, entrenched bureaucracies, subservient mass media, and a fanatical army of politically correct and “woke” partisans. Anyone who does not admit this is part of the problem.
Some nations (like Australia, Canada, the U.K., and most of the European Union) are much farther along in the process than we here in the United States. Freedom of speech and action in those places is heavily restricted in ways that are not yet fully in place here in America.
A lot will depend upon our next election. But if Americans are stupid enough to vote for the Democrats (the party of teachers’ unions, trial lawyers, and trannies), thereby keeping in power an addlepated hack and his criminal son, then maybe we deserve whatever we get.
Thank you, Joe. Personally I tend toward sonnets over villanelles, but it had been a while since I’d written one of the latter and the circularity of the structure seemed to suit the subject matter.
Yes, Australia is further down the road than the US. We are maybe doing a little better economically due to the fact we supply so many raw materials to China, but we are far worse off in terms of civil liberties. What’s worse, there is little prospect for change as both major parties are firmly in the control of globalists and the Westminster system offers no hope for insurgent candidates. Our only hope is that things will change in America, for where you go we will follow.
Your villanelle is skillfully written–on a timeless, universal topic.
Thank you for taking the time to read it, Janice.
Shaun, this takes some careful reading to understand how much you’ve put into it. The short form moves very quickly from the poor becoming poorer, to the poor living on debt just the way their masters do. You even include those who become rich in this disastrous economic situation, because they are sharp enough to go for “real” wealth (real estate, presumably, or something else that is tangible and less likely to be lost in a financial collapse). You are correct of course to say the situation is worst in places supposed to be living out a beneficial “revolution.” I think of the formerly communist countries now subsidized by the European Union. There the real wealth was stolen by bureaucrats in place when the next set of revolutionary changes took place. Dim prospect well attributed in your poem to the two refrain items: life in debt, and real work less and less rewarded.
I wanted to describe how inflationary policies are deliberately pursued as a means of wealth transfer from the middle classes to the rich, which is maybe a big ask for a villanelle, but I’m happy enough with how it turned out.
The promise of free money is obviously a vote winner (and there are some who have argued persuasively that this is the fatal flaw of democracy), but beyond this the monetary policies pursued by Western countries since the financial crisis of 2009 have been little more than a looting operation. Any kind of stimulus spending benefits those with the purchasing power to buy hard assets whilst those who merely service debt will suffer in the long run. The covid era, with all its stimulus spending, has seen an unprecedented concentration of wealth and power into the hands of the elites while more and more people, who had previously thought they were middle class, have been pushed into poverty.
And yes, the promise of “socialism” is part of the scam and waiting at the end of all of this is the universal basic income and a new and colder form of feudalism, untempered by Christian morality.
Or maybe I’m just being paranoid!
The form, of course, is perfect and the message is important and timely.
https://canadafreepress.com/article/neil-oliver-once-agains-nails-it
Thanks, Mike! I love Neil Oliver. My wife and I watched his documentary series on Vikings recently, which seems to have been scrubbed from the BBC’s streaming platform. He’s a great communicator of history in addition to being an incisive political commentator. Shame he’ll likely never be invited to work for the BBC again.
Shaun, I love a good villanelle and this one is excellent for its craftmanship and its message – a message that’s enhanced by the form. I especially like the chosen rhyme endings… atrophy, bourgeoisie, economy, and naiveté are little strokes of rhyming genius. The message sings loud and clear and makes my blood boil. I’m now wringing my hands wondering why many don’t see they are reaching their destination on their lifelong trip to serfdom. These lines are chilling: “You have become, in your naiveté, /A serf, but with a fancy new TV”… and oh so damn true. Shaun, thank you for your creativity and for your honesty!
Thank you for your kind remarks, Susan. For a while I worried that I was trying to cram too much into the form (there were a couple of additional stanzas I had to swap out) but I’m relatively happy with the result. It was a fun challenge to write a poem grounded in economic theory.
This one is really good—I love the villanelle form, of course, but the choice of refrains is great, as are the rhymes and of course the message. Keep it up!
Thank you, Joshua. I’m a fan of the villanelle too and should probably write more of them. I’m glad to hear you liked the refrains – given the form and subject matter, I felt it was important to make them as strong as possible.