Tid’n Onen hag Oll this Mayor

Bert Biscoe shares his thoughts on a subject which affects all who care about Kernow. You may agree or disagree with his view but it cannot be denied that the decision will have far-reaching consequences.

Tid’n Onen hag Oll this Mayor

To tell a People whose modern mythology includes the rejection of sugar in bitter tea to collectively make a stand against slavery by undermining the viability of the plantations which imposed their misery upon exploited generations, that their democracy, the application of their simple mark upon the ballot for the right to speak their mind, to be represented by their peers in the assembly of their nation and on higher benches of State, that the power of their vote is to be sold for a song, and their course marked henceforth upon some other’s chart by one, a single one, not one of their own, but a token servant of a Party whose interest lies in itself, and not in the content and peace of the owners of their vote – to do this all amounts to a crude deception, the reduction of a fine principle to the cess-pit of commerce – shame on you who propose such a trick!

Commerce and greed have closed our chapels;

Our homes stand void in vacant villages;

Our children write from faraway and bring

Their children to look at we as strangers

When they come on holiday, and light

That inner fire which burns to say ‘It’s here

We’ll come back to, to retire and die,

To remember sadly our dreams and ambitions

When we thought love could make us fly!’

Our boats lie dry and full of flowers,

Without commission or license, unable

To float, let alone follow the huer’s cry,

And fields without hedges fail to quilt

The rolling pastures of our eye, and silence,

A cruel and faithless state creeps in shafts,

Echoes on stopes, and dribbles shutes

Of crystallised hopes from adit lips to rot

The hemp and twist of mooring ropes –

Only apprenticeships lie anchored on slips

In harbours of our heart, and only priests

Of benefits and tenancies impart a hint

Of heaven, a subjugation of belonging-to-be

To the pristine reception and Private View,

The abstract vision of finest art, its term

And condition, its proof or provenance,

Occupying space, filling walls, in the miller’s

Lair, the miner’s beam and piston house,

The mowhay and grocer’s whitewashed shop –

We have smiled and bid ‘Good afternoon!’

To every voice that jars the air – every one!

And now you wish to capture our vote,

That for which all those names listed there,

Beside the lych, all those names fallen

In the ditch and wire of dynasties and ceasefire

Choir and Christmas football, their vote

Written in this square with the blood

Of unknown uncles, cousins and fathers,

All those names in the winter sun

Leaded and alphabetically at attention there –

You would pour a sterling note of devalued cash

Over this divine and direct mark,

Over this proud and modest plaque –

You would inflict upon us, who serve our time

In parish hall and committee room, in trust

And board, in stewardship and labour,

The fate of an orange splash flooded

With water to form a squash so pale

It drives the children whose fare it must be

Towards the rim and drain of harder ale!

But no amount of inclement rain upon

The soil and green glass of graves

Can dilute the blood which drenched the soil

Of fields from Bosworth to Passchendaele,

And cannot break the mortar bond

Of speech and vote that upholds

This freedom’s stoutly transparent wall

And echoes to an enfranchised widow’s wail –

For this imposition of hierarch to stand

Above the circle of our civic park, to milk

The udder of democracy of all representation

And motherly nurture, all for the sake

Of abstract powers and minutiae. Old men

Died young, trapped in laid-out bones,

To surrender breath and poetry, the taste of ale

And love beyond the common scale,

The snap of Piran’s Banner in March’s march,

The cry ‘Us cres?’ ‘Cres!’ ‘Us cres?’ ‘Cres!’

Across the Cornish field from circles

Of spirits trapped in dance to quays o’erlaid

To feed the fortune of happenstance,

The cry of Bards to Arthur’s crow, a glance

Of black and red across a cormorant sky –

And knee-deep in gorse and heather,

Pastry flakes and poems of long ago

At work in flowing beards, rising out of moors

And shafts and corrugated furrows,

Slipping sweetly between menhir posts

Of gates and knees in parted hedges, allowing

Eyes to know horizons, and in sunlight’s bower,

Watching love aglow in cowslip edges –

The cry of Gorsedh, pare and seine,

Of Jenner and Blight, of Quiller to Couch,

Of curlew to the tide returned again,

Of Arthur, from the night of Lyonesse –

O beware the ripples upon Dozmary’s pool,

The upward thrust of ancient fist, the sabre’s

Twist and sunlight blinding the poacher

As she sets her democratic snare, as we,

The few reach out to grasp her wrist – for this

Is no way to repair the wounds of belonging

Denied, of history concealed, of principle

Died for and fought for, field after field,

Heart after heart – if you would destroy

The desire of a lung to breathe for the sake

Of a few coins, for the coy deception

Of a union already broke, then shame upon you –

Shame upon the dragon in its sooty lair,

Shame upon polity for the tyranny

Of equality given, then held aloft until

Hind legs and snout portray the essence

Of civil servility, and freedom lies

In the strangulation of a nation sold,

Prevented from speaking for lack of air –

‘It’s not Onen hag oll at all, this Mayor!

It’s a trick of light, that cold light a dutiful

Daughter tastes on farewell lips pressed

To kiss a father’s brow, beyond her care,

That place at which only dead eyes stare’.

(Photo Steve Tanner)

Vyager gans Geryow (Bert Biscoe) lives in Truro. He is a poet and songwriter whose work draws on his interests in history, politics, social justice and language. He represents the people of Boscawen Division on Cornwall Council. The Division was formerly called ‘Moresk’ – an unbroken link from civic administration to the hurried escape of Tristan and Iseult from the vengeful wrath of King Mark – Bert tries to invest Cornish values into the demand of modern life. His work is fun, and best read aloud – which he does whenever the opportunity arises, especially with fellow Cornish poet, Pol Hodge. ‘Living in Trurra’ he says ‘means that there is a constancy of running water beneath your feet – there are two clocks which ring the hours dissonantly and out of step – a good environment for poems to flourish in the cracks and shadows. Nowadays, the mullet listen attentively in the lee of the Old Bridge’