Martin Fisher

Three Hundred Years The Same

The customs men rode hard at dawn,

Red-blooded — alive and roaring;

They found the cache like common dust

In tavern floorboards, cantina walls —

Under old La Sirena and El Venado.

Sixty riders, sworn and bound,

Sicarios now tattooed and sworn

To kings and jefes, greys and sombras.

Through secret door and tunnel dark

They ran their trade in defiance.

I smell salt barges in the dark of night,

Long-hauling brandy by lantern light;

Narco trucks and woollen caps,

Diesel fumes and scorching heat —

A desert crossing over sand and rock.

Galley and Chater's murder,

Parish men who clapped, then cowed —

When Revenue came to collect its fee,

Federales stood the same ground.

Through Sussex Weald and secret places,

Scattered wide across the green sierra;

Gibbets swung in forest gloom

From Sussex oak and hempen rope —

I saw my brothers hang.

Chained alive and left to rot —

Now bodies swing from overpass rails,

From warehouse shells and barbed wire:

The price to pay for French coin,

The price to pay for yanqui hope.

Colombian smiles round their necks like kilos

That dragged them to the edge;

At Goudhurst town their reckoning was plain —

In Tijuana it is still the same.

They fought their wars by torchlight

Over fragrant tea and foreign booty;

For limbs and lives, the King's own shilling

Tallied out the cost.

So blood was spilled for liquor and chay

On Albion's wind-scoured side —

For Revenue waits with sword and hook:

No tax is long denied.

So blood was spilled for meth and fentanyl

On Mexico's sun-scorched side —

For the DEA waits with badge and drone:

No route is long denied.

Omertà — seventeen forty-seven.

Then Hawkhurst's rule was done;

Six feet under Sussex clay,

Or ten thousand miles and gone.

In iron bonds the remnant sailed,

The rest were killed or died.

Omertà — twenty twenty-five.

Then the célula rule was done;

Six feet under Sinaloa dirt,

A thousand miles to Super-Max.

In iron cuffs the remnant flew,

The rest were hunted, killed, or died.

The underworld sank back to black —

Jacobite spite sealed every cask,

La nieve packed in darkness still,

Beneath the Crown, beneath the cartel's will.

Three hundred years. The same blood spilled.

The same dark trade. The same rope, fulfilled.

Martin Fisher's poems have appeared in Ink Sweat & Tears, ANTAE, jmww, Cosmic Daffodil Journal, Elysian Literary, and elsewhere. His working life carried him across Africa and Europe; he now lives in Hastings, where he works as a professional gardener. He writes from enjoyment, not ambition, between the garden and the day.