Ballade of Moderate Compassion by McGrath of Harlow

McGrath's Comments:  Ballades are a very satisfying way of letting off steam sometimes - they focus the anger and direct it in a controlled way. More like a knife than a club.&bnsp; Here's one I did a few years ago about some of the attitudes some fellow social workers used to reveal at times - and a particularly phrase that always used to enrage me.  (Especially in relation to anything to do with services for people with disabilities.):

Poor Mrs Brown is sick and tired and old,
And Mr Jones is muddled in his brain,
And Mary's child is crying in the cold,
and John is sleeping in the wind and rain;
they look for rescue, but they look in vain.
No lifebelt comes, instead these words are hurled:
"Your case is hard, but no good to complain -
we are not living in A Perfect World."

You longed for sea and sands of shining gold,
you booked your holiday in Sunny Spain -
you should have gone by train, but you were told
"It's quicker and more pleasant on the plane".
A slight diversion took you to Bahrein,
with blackened sands, where stinking oil slicks swirled,
you watch the seagulls down, and you explain
"We are not living in A Perfect World."

The sky grows dark, the world is bought and sold.
Christ on his cross dies for his own again;
the shepherd falls, the wolf is in the fold,
and all around are cries of grief and pain.
You measure out your pity grain by grain,
your neat umbrella is so tightly furled.
In face of agony, your tired refrain -
"We are not living in A Perfect World."

Prince of a thousand forms that measure pain,
your comfortable lips in judgement curled,
God knows you'd not be here, that much is plain
If we were living in A Perfect World.