THE DAY EVERY COUNTRY BUILT A WALL

THE DAY EVERY COUNTRY BUILT A WALL

“We won’t pay for your wall” the Mexicans say

“But we might build our own to keep Donald away!”

“Now, that’s an idea!” the Canadians thought

Walls between countries will stop wars being fought

America looked at the wall that they’d built

Then built one much taller to cover their guilt

They mocked the Mexican one & thought it too small

“If you want to keep folk out you must build it tall!”

Before long all the countries wanted to join in

Brick after brick, they enclosed themselves within

England and Scotland revived Hadrian’s success

Still rowing about which of them wanted it less

Then Wales got shut off, and then counties did shout

Cornwall started building to keep all the rest out

London put bricks around the M-twenty-five

Allowing its superior feelings to thrive

Pretty soon Europe had started to play

Deciding that they actually preferred it this way

France built towards Germany, built towards Spain

Belgium and Italy, then Germany once again

Across the world brick-laying was booming

It seemed they all agreed that some evil was looming

Once in a while somebody expressed their doubts

They were stood against their wall with no other way out

Outsiders inside got more walls within walls

When you can’t trust anyone, humanity falls

Neighbour looked at neighbour and built yet more fences

In response to slight slights and imagined offences

After some time, every country was walled

Communications between nations effectively stalled

A world all closed in to lonely isolated states

Foundations all built up on deep feelings of hate

Once inside their walls people started to fret

That others had got what they’d not got yet

Locked in their fortresses, life started to get rough

Decided that time had come for them to get tough

And so, one by one, they all declared war

Knowing where their lands end, they all wanted more

Smashing through barriers too broken to fix

Humanity got buried under a great pile of bricks

None of them recalled a place called Berlin

That got cut off for years to keep old ideas in

And people had torn that cruel wall down before

For freedom’s too precious for humans to ignore

Martin A W Holmes, September 2016