Ragged, disused billboards advertise The warnings of street-prophets, whose alphabet Is characters a fathom high, the void Filled by a single word, in Greek: Mistake. Or else in Lingua franca English, Wake Up! When did we listen to advice? Austerity digs deeper into debt, And ancient glaciers calve the weakened ice, And doom is just what hasn’t happened yet. We borrow days as fast as Time will lend them, And vote on Freedom, blighted referendum, Yet we are always quarrelling when the Persians Amass their cohorts. The odds are always harsh On the field of fennel near the brackish marsh.