The Prophet Of Wigan Pier Poem by Kojo Owusu

Wigan pier
On the painful road
The elms creak squalid slums
And echoes
Of pervasive poverty
Hut huddled together
Infamous
Turned a common wanderer
An ordinary Youngman
Into a radical avant-garde
A revolutionary
To champion the course
Of the poor
To send agonized ululation
To the clouds
To denounce the carefully
Wrought hypocrisy
To make conscious the down trodden
On the road to wigan pier
He was successful
Before he went to farm and
Reared animals
And in nineteen eighty four
Traveled to Oceania
Where he
Plunged in to the heart
Of the future
And returned
With a boon for dictators

Man is doomed to suffer
And through the suffering
May gain wisdom
Be ennobled
Siva’s son
The sacred Ganges
You left for Eton prestigious
Where the sharp contrast
Was enough to break a lions heart
But you were strong
And even immortalized
You never abjured the noble course

Listen then perjured leaders
Vociferously eloquent to defend the course
Of justice and equity
But when the mandate is granted
Absolute – unapproachable
Soar above them with cruel canine
Manipulate them with crude mystification.