I see the Tiber foaming, or is that the Thames I spy?
It’s hard for me to tell these days – it’s all red to my eye.

That wisp of smoke a funeral pyre? What else could it be?
I cannot watch you “heaping up” – there’ll be no help from me.

I know the gods have sent you mad, but still you took their cup.
You sat down at their poison feast, and on their off’rings supp.

I stand here like the Roman, wishing you could understand.
To see you cow’ring in the corner; and who holds the whip-hand.

I can hear the echo clearly from a chorus – execration!
Yet my bones within the earth tell me, there’s lifeblood in this nation.

At times of trial like Hannibal, we see who’s fit to fight.
Perhaps one way to tell, is to see who thinks I’m right.

– Luke Torrisi is a retired legal practitioner and now an academic researcher and host of Carpe Diem, Sydney’s only explicitly Traditionalist and Paleoconservative radio programme broadcasting on 88.9FM, between 8:00 to 10:00pm, Mondays.

Editorial note:

• This poem contains several allusions to a speech made by British Conservative MP, Enoch Powell, in 1968, to the West Midlands Area Conservative Political Centre. Extract from the speech are presented as today’s Guest Video.

SydneyTrads is the web page of the Sydney Traditionalist Forum: an association of young professionals who form part of the Australian independent right (also known as “non-aligned right”).