When considering the patterns of the individual and the patterns of family and heritage, the homeland draws a frame.

England, that tiny land mass with such disproportionately significant influence throughout history, is no longer standing. It is on its knees. There is a subservience that clouds the eyes and minds of the people, an unquestioning obedience to authority, an unthinking adherence to mechanical routines. A discordant mix of cultures and ideologies has been artificially forced into claustrophobic proximity; tensions ferment ominously as the dull sport of grumbling-about-the-mundane releases a little steam and fills the streets with its pointless noise.

Until you go elsewhere and re-acclimatize over time, you are a fish in water. The English water is indeed murky, muddied most recently by two brutal wars that brought about a high velocity crushing of morale and annihilated generations of men in one fell swoop. The brave were destroyed; those who returned were damaged. The right to bear arms has long since gone, and the inability to protect home and family has stripped us of our power and our sovereignty. Men cannot defend those they love, and beyond that, most of them fail to see that they have allowed this tragedy.

This is our land, and we have forgotten.

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The Wilderness by Kathleen Raine

I came too late to the hills: they were swept bare
Winters before I was born of song and story,
Of spell or speech with power of oracle or invocation,

The great ash long dead by a roofless house, its branches rotten,
The voice of the crows an inarticulate cry,
And from the wells and springs the holy water ebbed away.

A child I ran in the wind on a withered moor
Crying out after those great presences who were not there,
Long lost in the forgetfulness of the forgotten.

Only the archaic forms themselves could tell!
In sacred speech of hoodie on gray stone, or hawk in air,
Of Eden where the lonely rowan bends over the dark pool.

Yet I have glimpsed the bright mountain behind the mountain,
Knowledge under the leaves, tasted the bitter berries red,
Drunk water cold and clear from an inexhaustible hidden fountain.

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A sense of what is being lost is tangible to all who choose to look below the surface of our current material stupidity. I write these observations with great sorrow, and I grieve for this once powerful land as it falls dormant. It has produced so much goodness and beauty.