Missing Keepsakes
“Upto 2000 artefacts are believed to have been stolen from the British Museum over the last ten years.”
– Curator’s Quarterly
Five-odd million artefacts,
Or maybe twice as many,
Filling dusty drawers and racks,
From Hull to Abergavenny.
Boxed-up, stacked-up, locked-up long,
With rusty coins and broken gems,
And set by law to house this throng,
Without the funds to open them.
Blame the politicians,
Blame the thieves,
Blame management as lax –
But never blame the public who believes
In paying less of tax.
But no-one ever thanks us for
The treasures we preserve,
That otherwise get lost to war,
Or buried in the earth.
Plenty on the left have sneered
At colonial comeuppance
While others on the right have cheered
At wokeness not worth tuppence.
And both have kicked the workers
Who are overworked and underpaid,
Because we’re just the lurkers
In the basement, in the way.
They never cared before,
Enough to fund the work they left to spoil –
And still they will not thank us for
Our centuries of toil.
It’s others source the objects,
We just clean, and log, and save –
And that takes funds, and takes respect,
And a culture well-behaved.
Rhyming Couplets 