All language subtitles for [1988] The Last of England

Imprisoned memories
prowl thro' the dark.

Fuck it. They scatter like rats...

Dead souls. Rat a pat a
patter into the silence.

Ashes drift in the back of the skull.

A goblin parts the curtains
with a slant-eyed chuckle.

Panic. I blink as he vanishes into the
shadows, hint of prophetic cats-eyes.

The dust settles thick, so by five
when I stagger to the freezing bathroom

I leave footprints
for others to excavate.

They say the Ice Age is coming,
the weather's changed.

The air stutters tic tic tic tic,

rattle of death-watch
beetle on sad slate roofs.

The ice in your glass
is radioactive, Johnny.

Outside in the leaden hail the swan
of Avon dies a syncopated death...

A black frost grips July by the throat.

We pull the curtains tight over
the dawn, and shiver by empty grates.

The household gods have departed,
no one remembers quite when.

Poppies and corncockle have
long been forgotten here,

like the boys who died in Flanders,

their names erased by a late frost
that clipped the village cross.

Spring lapped the fields in arsenic
green, the oaks died this year.

On every green hill mourners stand,
and weep for The Last Of England.

My teacher said, �There are more walls
in England than in Berlin, Johnny. �

What were we to do in those
crumbling acres? Die of boredom?

Or recreate ourselves, emerging from
the chrysalis all scarlet and turquoise

as death�s heads from chip plants.

Moths of the night.

Not your clean-limbed cannon fodder
for the drudgey nine-to-five.

Sniffing glue instead of
your Masonic brandies.

We fell off the cogs of misfortune.

Out to lunch in 501s.
Knotting up the pricks in the disco.

We heard prophetic voices:

� I saw the best minds
of my generation destroyed by madness.

Starving, hysterical, naked... �

� Not with a bang, but a whimper... �

And gathered everything you threw
out of your dream houses,

treasured your trash cans.

Picking through the tatters
of your lives we jumbled the lot,

and squatted your burnt-out hearths.

Your world, beavering away
at its own destruction,

serviced the profit machine and
creaked to a halt, not with a bang.

Even our protests were hopeless.
Neat little marches down blind alley.

All around, malevolent bureaucracies
mutated, large as dinosaurs.

A thin yellow pus
drained through exhausted institutions.

Citizens stood mute, watching children
devoured in their prams.

And all you did, in the desperation, was
celebrate the Windsors, yet again.

Old cows stagger to the slaughterhouse
to emerge as roast oxen.

What do you see in those heavy waters?
I ask.

Nothing but a bureaucrat
from the ministry

poisoning the buttercups
with a new defoliant.

What's that I hear?

The sound of Gershwin
on his ghetto blaster.

What else?
The atom splitting.

And the whispering?

Half-truths spilling
from the minister's case.

Wriggling in the blinding sun?

What are they saying?

All's well, no comment.
Someof them are silent.

Ah here's the guard.

What's the password?

EVASION.

What else do you see?

Lies flowing through the national grid,
and bribery.

All's normal then?
Yes.

Where's hope?

The little white lies have carried
her off beyond the cabbage patch.

They've murdered her?

Yes.

And Tomorrow?

Tomorrow's been cancelled
owing to lack of interest.

You saw the graffiti years ago on
the Euston Road, and didn't believe it;

What proof do you need the world's
curling up like an autumn leaf?

The storm's coming
to blow it into the final winter.

Can't you feel the days
are getting shorter?

The sad old Emperor bent
beneath his black top hat

smiles in the deathly sunlit silence.

The Lady next door to me
says "There he is!

There's Hirohito
and his Empress Nagasake. "

Look! Johnny look!

They're playing the funeral march
for the Royal Doulton.

He stole the patterns way back when you
were a little boy, no one cared much.

They were busy squandering
our threadbare patrimony on the atom.

Now you see it, now you don't.

England had it years back,

us kiddies weaned on food parcels
from uncle Randy in the wild west

choc - full of comix and bubble gum.

I grew up in the wind of change ma'am!

Quite! Quite blew away my reason.

Dad switched on the cathode ray
at your coronation

and watched the weather forecast
in the suburban drizzle ever after.

His father's father's father's
presentation clock,

a black marble mausoleum
ticked out my childhood.

101 years of middle class assurance.

The bomb dropped with regular monotony,

leaving us waiting -

the frosty heart of England
blighted each spring leaf,

all aspiration withered in the blood.

In the silence of an English
suburb power

and secrecy dwell in the same house,

while far away in the big city
the A to Z clamped a grid on despair

The world will never forget

What kind of the people
do they think we are

Squad! Squad!

By the right! Left! Right! Left! Right!
Left! Right! Left!

Don't be sad

Aim!
Fire!

Speed bonnie boat,
like a bird on the wing

Onward, the sailors cry

Carry the lad that's born to be king

Over the sea to Skye.

Loud the winds howl, loud the waves roar

Thunder clouds rend the air

Baffled our foe's stand on the shore

Follow they will not dare.

Speed bonnie boat,
like a bird on the wing

Onward, the sailors cry

Carry the lad that's born to be king

Over the sea to Skye.

Speed bonnie boat,
like a bird by the wing

Onward, the sailors cry

Carry the lad that's born to be king

Over the sea to Skye.

Loud the winds howl, loud the waves roar

Thunder clouds rend the air

Baffled our foe's stand by the shore

Follow they will not dare.

Speed bonnie boat,
like a bird on the wing

Onward, the sailors cry

Carry the lad that's born to be king

Over the sea to Skye.

- Is it loaded?
- Yes, ma'am.

- Did you enjoy the Folklands?
- Yes, ma'am.

- Preparing for the next one?
- Yes, ma'am.

- It's going to be a big one, isn't it?
- I hope so, ma'am.

Keep up the good work.