Parley

fear with its mandate threatened smaller things
merely by the shadow cast
whose squadrons like bats from the benches rose quoting points of law
liegemen of the gilded palm
crowding skies they flew to boasting of their darling lord
and in the Franco-Latin tongue I saw that
any treasure may have novelty when fetched afar
may be as useful as a crown or priceless as a loaded bar
when the laboured freight is strapped aback the poor-man
some black some white some old Chinese some Muslim
domiciled and pledged to be the whipping boy of nations
the frocks of politics will hold
behind the gloss and flexing stick of law
a drink at the bar to the oppression of right
by the corruption of semantics
and from its coruscated tankard
to piss it down the drain